Another postman book. Can't say I'm as impressed by this as by Amusing Ourselves to Death or Technopoly, but this was still a valuable read, especially as I may be in education myself one day.

This book has two parts. The first makes the case that we need a teleology of education (i.e. the why). I agree with this, and it would be weird not to. After all, that's 18-22 years of life that we're taking from the young in our society. There has to be a good reason for that. Then Postman argues that the current dominant teleology, of preparing men and women for productive work doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I tend to agree with this: if I was being prepared for a specific career (biologist), my undergraduate and late-highschool education would have been better served as an apprentice in lab. However, I also think that in addition to this problem, the education system doesn't really know what it's teleology is. In highschool especially I heard many mixed messages from teachers as regards to this.

In the second part, Postman has some concrete suggestions as to what the teleology of education should be. I generally liked these and don't have much to say about their content.

So why the four stars? Postman is very in favor of "public" education, and I'm not really sure how much value such a system has. Not everyone in society is either fit or willing to be interested in art, music or philosophy. I think a platonic system where everyone has their own natural place, and thus different form of education would be much better suited to our society.