Conscientious Objections

Rating:
Summary: Alright early stuff.. but not his best
Review: I actually went out just to get Building a bridge to the 18th century but that was in hardcover so i decided to just get a paperback of this .. i've read all his 80's and 90's works and like the previous reviewer said.. it is just a compressed version of his later works.. it's actually easier to read since he doesn't go into his frequent bit of going back a couple centuries and talk about when print was just introduced as in his other books.. Anyways, a good read.. Yes this was helpful!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I have admired Neil Postman ever since the days of Teaching As a Subversive Activity. It's thus with regret that I can't recommend this collection of essays. I found little insight, much condescension, and even more of what in his opening essay he sneered at social scientists for doing: stating the obvious as if it was profound discovery.

That opening essay, "Social Science as Moral Theology," in which he attempts - and fails - to show that sociologists, psychologists, and the like are "storytellers" rather than scientists, is a prime example. (Since my background is in physics, I should have been expected to be sympathetic to Postman's view. That I still found it so unconvincing should be an indication of how weak his argument is.) Just a few examples:

- He defines "science" in a way that excludes social sciences - an utterly invalid method by which anyone can "prove" literally anything.

- He derides as meaningless non-science studies linking TV viewing with aggressive behavior because they haven't come to any clear conclusion. (Astronomers still can't agree on how galaxies form. Are they not doing science?)

- He misstates scientific process and misdefines "empirical" as requiring "natural life situations," by which standard all of quantum physics and much of relativity physics are likewise non-scientific "storytelling."

- And frankly, anyone who gleefully writes about how he sprang a well-considered line of argument on a professor and brags that "it did not take me long ... to reduce her to saying" such-and so is not engaging in rational argument but ego-tripping.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that in subsequent chapters he does not hesitate to use some of the same methods he denounces as "storytelling" - demographic surveys, intergroup comparisons, etc. - when they will advance his argument.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity remains one of the most important books ever published about education. If you haven't read it, do. And do read Postman's works on the dangers of over-reliance on technology. But skip this volume in favor of another.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but only if you're new to Postman.
Review: The book probably is a good summary of Neil Postman's ideas if you're new to him, but if you've already read his major works there's not much here to recommend. In fact, some of the ideas and even the prose can be pretty slack at times. Should pique the interest of newcomers, however.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Introduction to Neil Postman
Review: This book contains essays and chapter excerpts from most of his other works (though not the later ones like Technopoly and The End of Education). Neil Postman is one of the keenest and most articulate of that species I call the "cultural hand-wringers". I'm very sympathetic to the arguments he makes, though sometimes I think he may be a bit too dire. I've read everything he's written that I can get my hands on, and all of it has been a total delight. (I'd steer any Postman fans to Robert Hughes _The Culture of Complaint_ for similarly keen, delightful, and refreshing take-no-prisoners denunciations) Since so much of his work is a complaint about how form (e.g. TV) has coopted function, I hardly think Postman himself would approve of this kind of recommendation, but he's so much fun to read even if you *don't* agree with him that it's worth the effort anyway. But watch out: he's so persuasive and passionate with his arguments, you'll probably end up doing so no matter how well-armed you are against it.

Two essays that have stuck in my mind: "The German Question" where he ponders what the Holocaust consciousness will mean to postwar Germany, and "The Small Screen" where Postman is invited to write something nice about television for once.