Well I finally finishing Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression by Dr. Mary Ruwart.  Incidentally you can find an older version of this text for free online.  You have to give this book a lot of credit for being well organized.  There is a full index in the back as well as an appendix of citations.  Each chapter is broken into small sections with a one page chapter summary at the end.  In that respect, it kind of reads like a textbook.  I know I’ll use it in the future if I need to look up information on a particular topic.  The book also deserves credit for covering everything.  I mean that in the Cleveland quoting Peter Griffin, “Eeeeeevvvverythaaaang” sense.  I’ve never seen a libertarian book do such a good job of covering so many topics in three hundred some pages.

Most importantly it is writen from a compassionate perspective, which has caused me to by a few extra copies for my friends and parents.  No vulgar libertarianism here, just genuine concern for other people.  Dr. Ruwart cites numerous examples of how aggression hurts everyone, from the playground all the way up to wallstreet.  The language is simple, direct and quotes are included in the margins pertaining to the topics being addressed.

Now, this review isn’t just going to be a Ruwart love-fest.  There are a few things wrong with the book as well.  Let’s start with the most readily apparent, the cover.  It’s terrible and it’s turned a decent amount of people off from the book.  People I recommend the book to look at me like, “You want me to read that?  With the twin towers and the dove?”  I’ve considered putting a brown paper bag dust cover on it before I give it to people.  As much as it goes against conventional wisdom, people do judge a book by its cover.  I’m sure this book’s cover has hurt its sales.

As I stated earlier, it reads like a textbook.  Textbooks are usually packed with information, but not particularly engaging.  I could knock this book for not grabbing the reader, but I don’t really think that’s what it’s about.  I’d recommend that people read it slowly and pick topics they are already interested in to research.  Treat it like a textbook and it will serve you well.  Just don’t go thinking that it’s going to be riveting.

So to sum things up, I’d say this is a book you definitely have to own.  In time you’ll probably read all of it.  You may disagree with parts and you may find yourself quoting other parts.  It’s very well researched and organized so you’ll probably use it as a reference.

At Liberty Forum I picked up a copy of John Taylor Gatto’s A Different Kind of Teacher. It’s a relatively short collection of essays concerning various subjects. The book starts out strong with essays about the current state of the classroom from an actual teacher.  As a teacher, let me tell you that, that’s refreshing.  The essays are arranged such that they continue on this tare for a while. I find myself agreeing with Mr. Gatto a lot on these points. Mr. Gatto includes a letter from a student detailing how he teaches. He discusses his form of education that required students to not show up to school as often, but instead perform community service and internships. He describes why schooling costs so much by following the money. He also does an excellent job detailing the difference between schooling and education:

Let’s get it clear in our minds that schooling is not education — you can easily compensate for lacking a schooling, but there is no way to make up for the damage that occurs without an education. Without that you are smaller than you would have been.
Plenty of brilliant and famous people have lacked schooling — George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Admiral Farragut, Thomas Edison, Margaret Meade, and many more — but all of them had a fine education.

Then things begin to slow down. With the essay, “Horatio Alger’s Country: The Mysterious Origins of American Adoption” Mr. Gatto takes the reader on a long and boring journey through the history of education in America. This section seems heavy handed and under-engaging, making the reader trudge through every page turn. He loses some of the charm, uniqueness and brevity of his earlier essays. Things pick up a bit with the essay “A Different Kind of Teacher” then they turn down a weird American Christian praising and money-hating path where Mr. Gatto extols the virtues of the idea of original sin, early American Christian congregations, bashes science (possibly a favorite pasttime of his) and explains how adding money to anything cheapens the act involved and degrades the service. Perhaps some examples are in order:

The trouble with science is that its truths are only partial. Galileo had the facts right about the dead matter of the solar system, but said nothing about the cosmology of the human spirit.

“There is joy for those who seek the common good.” Joy for those who seek the common good. And I remembered my mother’s beautiful Christmas trees that took days of hard effort to create, effort in the family’s common service. I remembered her collecting of kitchen grease and metal scrap for the war effort…

… I do have an interesting bit of recent evidence in support of Simmel’s theory. In 1971 the National Book Award for nonfiction went to a title called The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy by Richard M. Titmuss, et al., a book which undertook to explore whether valuable things given freely — like services rendered voluntarily — were more or less valuable than the same services as part of a commercial system.
The commodity the author took for his test was human blood…
The book’s conclusions aren’t the slightest bit ambiguous: where blood is sold the quality is terrible, prices sky-high, shortages common; and where blood is sold there is also frequently danger to the purchaser…

At this point, I was kind of surprised. How can someone so intelligent and so successful working in a very difficult system have ideas that are so incongruous with their actions? It seems to me that Mr. Gatto has done some great analysis of what is wrong with the system and given some solutions that can be implemented at the classroom level. At the same time, his essays in the latter half of this book point to the idea that he doesn’t support a market for something as valuable as education. He firmly clings to spirituality to support his reasoning and doesn’t understand much about the ideals of science and the impact they have on the world. He rails on machines and labor saving devices with an almost Luddite tendency.  I was my clothes in a bucket and I still think his reasoning is flawed.  Say what you want about Zerzan, but at least he does a better job backing up his arguments. Mr. Gatto seems to be ignorant as to how scientific progress occurs and the net impact it has on society. He also has a tendency to impress the importance of a faith that dictates that humans are so weighed down with sin from the moment of birth that they are “unfit to eat the crumbs” from under the table of god.  The final essays in this book reminded me of the kind of hand-waving arguments you get from people who aren’t grounded in reality.

So, to sum up.  The book had a good strong start and then got boring and finished by getting weird and foolish.  Mr. Gatto has good ideas to offer, but much research and critical thought needs to go into what he says before you can use the information.  The good thing is I’m sure Mr. Gatto wouldn’t want it any other way.  He’d probably demand that his students crtically analyze what he says rather than accept it all at face value.

Murray Bookchin was asked to write a short (200 page) book summarizing his beliefs.  Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future was the result.  It covers many topics in a somewhat structured manner that builds up to Mr. Bookchin’s suggestions about what should be done.  I had to read this book with a dictionary for the first 100 pages or so.  After that the book picks up in pace and since you have the vocabulary memorized it becomes a lot more accessible.

Bookchin starts by defining society and ecology and explaining how their meanings have developed.  He then goes on to talk about the emergence of hierarchies, classes and the state.  These first two chapters will be the most difficult for a first time Bookchin reader.  It’s dry stuff with the occasional interesting historical reference.  Bookchin has a domineering “know-it-all” style which he actually supports by acutely delving into many aspects of history.  I would not want to have had an argument with this guy, he would mop the floor with me.  He rails on primitivism, explains how mankind is a natural step in evolution and emphasizes our social nature.  I found this passage particularly poignant:

Human beings, no less a product of natural evolution than other mammals, have definitively entered the social world.  By their very own biologically rooted mental power, they are literally constituted by evolution to intervene into the biosphere.  Tainted as the biosphere may be by present social conditions, their presence in the world of life marks a crucial change in evolution’s direction from one that is largely adaptive to one that is, at least, potentially creative and moral.  In great part their human nature is formed socially — by prolonged dependence, social interdependence, increasing rationality, and the use of technical devices and their willful application.  all of these human attributes are mutually biological and social, the latter forming on of natural evolutions greatest achievements.

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I recently took a trip to one of my favorite sporting goods stores with bile and laur.  I noticed a box of books written by a comrade of mine from ALL.  I was pretty happy to see them out in public so I snatched up a copy, read it and brought it to the next ALL meeting to get it signed.  What follows is a review of the book.  It should be noted that while I do know the author I’m striving to be impartial in my review.

The book details a fictional account of a young man attending high school when a large scale school shooting takes place in another state.  The administration of the building as well as federal authorities leverage the tragedy to continue to institute oppressive policies at the school.  Certain types of students are targeted and harassed based on their appearance or habits.  In an effort to strike back at the people oppressing him, the protagonist posts fliers claiming that April 19th is “Bring a Gun to School Day”.  As you can imagine, the reaction of the federal agents and school administration is quite over-the-top.  All hell proceeds to break loose.

As a teacher I was impressed by the authors ability to accurately capture the sort of shenanigans that occur in a public school.  The school isn’t portrayed in a very nice light, but I’d say at least 90% of the actions taken by the school are very probable in the real world.  The author’s ruminations on the purpose of attendance systems and school IDs are quite on target.  Also the author seems very clued in to the sheer amount of mayhem that can result from a large bureaucracy and the absolution from individual accountability that comes with it.

The novella is written in simple direct prose which makes for a very quick read.  Despite this it still managed to noticeably pick up the pace approximately two-thirds of the way in.  As is true of most political fiction the storyline is used as a medium for conveying political thoughts.  Internal monologues and dialog between the characters are often used simply to espouse political ideals.  I would complain that the characters seem a little flat, but in all honesty the novella is only 121 pages long.  That’s really a tiny space in which to fully develop the characters.  The writing style also seems a very juvenile to me, but it does match the characters involved.  Someday, I’d like to see the author create a longer novel geared more towards adults.

Taking into account the inherent difficulty in writting a novella and the fact that this seems to be the authors first published work this book shows real promise.  Literary criticism aside, the book also tells a story that really needs to be heard.  As someone who was in highschool during the Columbine shootings, I’d like to see more of this kind of expression.  I’d recommend this book for young adults interested in libertarian ideals and looking for a quick read.  It strikes me as the kind of thing that could possibly open the eyes of a young person.