Westhues, Kenneth. (1998). Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process. Reviewed by Peggy Brandt Brown, University of North Texas

Westhues, Kenneth. (1998). Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process. Lewiston, N.Y.: Kemper Collegium Publication, The Edwin Mellen Press. Pp. 218 $29.95(Cloth)     ISBN 0-7734-8210-5 Reviewed by Peggy Brandt Brown University of North Texas April 16, 2001             When a friend of mine who works in a different department of my university read Kenneth Westhues's Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process, he said the book made him laugh and offered him some insights. My friend said he could look around his department and see who was in one of the five stages of dismissal that Westhues delineates. Westhues means for his book to be humorous, which it is, but only to a point. Westhues is an angry man who uses his book to vent his frustration at the process in which he is caught. It is insightful, but over and over I came back to what the book could have been as compared to what it is.             Westhues is a sociology professor at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, who wrote Eliminating Professors between September 28th and December 11th of 1997. The dates are important because while he was writing the book, he was waiting for an outside judge (or arbitrator) to deliver a final, binding decision to the president of Westhues's university concerning his side in a discipline case in which he had been involved for four years. The book is divided into five parts and in each section Westhues spends time telling his readers what is happening with the continuing delays in the delivery of the outside judge's verdict. The "Outside Judge" is a top level administrator from another Canadian university who continually is unable to make his deadlines for reasons anyone ever involved in the active administration of a university can imagine. Eliminating Professors is a catharsis of Westhues's anger and stress while he is in that particular limbo of academe. As Limbo is the abode of souls barred from heaven, so is Westhues barred from his normal academic life because during this time he is on a semester sabbatical. As he writes, he is unsure if he will be able to return to the place where he has spent his professorial life for the last 22 years. This is not an objective work that gives no indication of the author's life or bias. It is a cry against what has been happening to him and a venting of his frustration and bitterness.             Westhues states that he undertook to study "the process by which people get eliminated from groups, organizations and societies. Such a study struck me [as] a sociologist's duty, to answer a public need" (p.vii). He continues: Every corporation faces the problem of how to eliminate an employee with whom its contract is not simply at will, that is, dissolvable for any or no reason. Tenured professors are but an extreme example of employees who have a claim to permanence, often also seniority, autonomy, high salary, emotional ties and substantial investment of self. Employees of this kind are hard to terminate. Formally, they can be dismissed only for cause.(p.ix).             He asserts that he is writing about the patterns that groups follow to expel someone from the social circle. He offers his work as a handbook for line administrators in higher education and for managers and officials concerned with human resources issues. But the book is not a guide, but rather a satire with all administrators portrayed as unethical, manipulative, vindictive, and just plain nasty people while the other actors are either dupes or innocent souls who are persecuted while trying to work in places where they only think that "values on critical, independent thought, academic freedom, tenure, and individual rights continue to hold sway." (p. 115)             Westhues collected 25 case studies of other people who were being forced to leave places they had worked for long periods of time. Most, but not in all the cases, were academics. From these cases, Westhues synthesized a construct he calls Dr. PITA which stands for Pain In The Ass, which pretty well describes these people. They are the ones who are out of step. Over and over his most vivid examples are people who are ethic minorities and frequently internationals whose native languages are not English. He maintains that the root of the problem is tenure or some other kind of continuing status that prevents the troublemaker from being fired. If the person did not have tenure, he or she would have been fired Westhues claims. The only thing the administrator (who wants this human problem to go away) has to do is ignore any claims of tenure or of a "lifelong or career-long moral commitment between colleagues, an imagined bond of reciprocal trust. Each was expected to tolerate the other's rants and ravings, no matter how unsound, unbalanced, unmarketable, or unpopular"(p.17). For Westhues, there is never a legitimate reason for the removal of a tenured PITA.             The book is divided into five parts that parallel the concept of workplace mobbing developed by Heinz Leymann. The first part is called "Overview and Objective" and discusses who Dr. PITA is and why a university would want to get rid of such a person. Westhues describes ten alternative exit doors through which Dr. PITA can be pushed. These are retirement, fabricated resignation, transfer, death, "long-term disability/physical illness, long- term illness/mental illness, early retirement, dismissal for cause, downsizing or financial exigency, and constructive dismissal or, in the USA, when Dr. Pita decides to sue the university for damages.             The second part of the book discusses the two initial stages of the elimination process which are ostracization and harassment. Westhues calls these techniques "torment" and they include many ways an administrator can make life miserable for a professor. During these stages the professor's department begins to mark Dr. PITA as different and a person who does not belong. In this section, Westhues discusses a worst case scenario. In 1992, after over eight years of turmoil, Dr. Valeery Fabrikant brought a high powered rifle to his workplace at Concordia University in Montreal and shot four professors dead and severely wounded a fifth. Westhues analyzes Fabrikant's case identifying the different stages of elimination the administration used to get Fabrikant to leave and how the process only created an overpowering rage in its victim.             Stage Three is called "the Incident" and is the subject of the third part of the book. The Incident is an event which the administrators can use to start official investigations or some type of proceedings against Dr. PITA. Westhues implies that the incidents are always overblown and frequently instigated or even fabricated to provide an excuse to proceed against Dr. PITA. In this section Westhues made an interesting argument about sexual harassment being society's current catch-all of moral indignation, a cause for moral panic, but ruined his point by implying that all sexual harassment claims are chimeras. It is demeaning to people who have been sexually harassed and have had the courage to come forward. He also seems unaware that many businesses are dealing with the issue of sexual harassment by spending time and money on the development of policies, training, investigations and enforcement. In many large businesses, people accused of sexually harassing others are suspended immediately and fired upon the completion of investigations that prove their guilt. Appeals are handled in the courts. The process does not take four years.             The fourth section of the book is called "The Aftermath of the Incident" and deals with the procedures and actors in the appeals DR. PITA usually makes against his or her accusers. Westhues's satirical vein runs strong in this section. He discusses judges, arbitrators, the media and Dr. PITA's friends and how the administrators can block all efforts made on the behalf of the beleaguered Dr. PITA.             Stage Five is simply "Elimination". Westhues was writing this section in November, and his distress over the lack of resolution of his own case is truly the subject of this section. He does discuss mental illness as an exit door an administration can use to shove out a PITA. In each of the cases he cites, he depicts the professors as harmless victims being pushed around. The administrators are overreacting just to get the PITA out. As a licensed professional counselor, I found these cases particularly disturbing. Based on his descriptions of the situations, my reaction is that there were enough true warning signs to warrant caution. In his discussion of the Fabrikant case, Westhues described what could happen. He made us aware of just how bad things can get. In each of the mental illness cases, if something had not been done and Dr. PITA had responded violently, there would have been no excuse for inactivity on the part of those involved.             Westhues raises legitimate concerns relating to the process groups use to force former members to leave. However, the loss of one person's employment is not comparable to the Nazi's extermination of the Jews and other ethic minorities. Repeatedly, Westhues quotes sources that draw that comparison. If he wishes to compare the two, he could use the workplace mobbing phenomenon, show its application to both situations and discuss how this could be an example of a universal human societal pattern employed in many situations involving the distancing of one person from a group. He could have supported his conclusions with other studies of similar types. Yet he said, "Little holocausts are happening every day in our most civilized societies."(p.vii).             Earlier I said I kept looking at what this book could have been. The book I would have liked to have read could have discussed how the entrenchment that tenure encourages is the basis of the problem and could have suggested a new, more humane way of dealing with embedded faculty. It could have explored other, less damaging ways to remove people from their workplaces. The Fabrikant case could have been used as a worst case scenario and other solutions explored that could have resolved the situation in less drastic ways. Westhues could have made Eliminating Professors the work of scholarship that he intimated it would be in his foreword by using citations and naming sources and by careful examination of the issues and literature relating to the topic. He claims to be doing a study, but there is no standard sociological methodology in this work.             If he had been a little more light handed, a little less angry, and a little more balanced in his presentation, this could have been a very humorous work. Westhues is writing satire. Any man who can say, "most professors have the media savvy of toads" (page 144) is not lacking in wit.             Another colleague of mine who has been the victim of workplace mobbing—a term she understood and identified with immediately—said she would have liked to have seen more on how a person in such a situation could "dodge the bullet" as Westhues apparently has done. (However, we do not know this for certain because the book ends before the Outside Judge returns his decision. Three years later Westhues is still at the University of Waterloo, but the reader does not know if he is an active, accepted member of his community again or if he exists at the edge of the academic world, still in limbo if you will, as were some of the Dr. PITAs in his case studies.)             Westhues's Eliminating Professors engaged me on several different levels. Although it was not the book I thought I was getting, it did cause me to think about and question group and departmental dynamics in ways I had not before. I became aware of new areas of research. I do know different people got very different meanings and insights from the work and on that basis alone I can recommend it. About the Reviewer Peggy Brandt Brown is with the Program in Higher Education, College of Education, University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. She is a licensed professional counselor with the State of Texas although her license is inactive at this time. Her areas of interest are higher education administration, college students and suicide, and grant writing for student services and student development interests.

Lindsey, Randall B.; Robins, Nuri; & Terrell, Raymond D. (1999). Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders. Brenda Campbell Jones, Azusa Pacific University

Lindsey, Randall B.; Robins, Nuri; & Terrell, Raymond D. (1999). Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Pp. 238 pp. $28.95 (Paper)         ISBN 0803967632 Brenda Campbell Jones Azusa Pacific University April 20, 2001         Lindsey, Robbins, and Terrell in their book, Cultural Proficiency, A Manual for School Leaders, present a voice on matters of culture, pedagogy, and politics in our schools that prevent success for many of our children, especially children of poverty and of color. They assert that culture can be understood and that powerful learning for each child is within the grasp of well-prepared teachers. The authors offer a wide variety of rich anecdotal examples that can be the source of meaningful dialogue around such issues as race, culture, and oppression. The reader feels compelled to examine his or her internal biases and assumptions about teaching, learning, and professional practices. The book offers practical staff development strategies and activities that will enrich our understanding of our children and ourselves.         Cultural Proficiency, A Manual for School Leaders is especially significant to school administrators because it makes a convincing argument for administrators and teachers to become culturally proficient in order to meet the needs of our diverse population. Lindsey et al. define cultural proficiency as follows: Cultural proficiency is the policies and practices of an organization or the values and behaviors of an individual that enable the agency or person to interact effectively in a culturally diverse environment. Cultural proficiency is reflected in the way an organization treats it employees, its client and its community. (p. 21)         Culturally proficient educators recognize that culture means far more than recognizing racial and ethnic differences. It suggests that we must always be willing to be in a state of learning in order to demonstrate an understanding of various cultures. We need to be able to respond effectively to issues of culture and diversity in order to facilitate student learning. This approach can lead to positive community relations, foster effective leadership and enrich the teacher's ability to learn and teach. The authors contend that a culturally proficient school "promotes inclusiveness and institutionalizes processes for learning about differences and responding appropriately to those differences." (p. 25)         In a world where the "minority" is rapidly becoming the "majority," the contribution that the authors make could not be mmore timely. Cultural proficiency is neither a program nor a series of steps to become more culturally aware, but rather a way for us to view and experience our world. It is based on the belief that all people have the capacity to be the change we want in the world.         The book focuses on two major areas, the Cultural Proficiency Model and Barriers to Cultural Proficiency. The first area of focus, the Cultural Proficiency Model, complete with the continuum, essential elements, and guiding principles, is punctuated with cases studies and other references that serve to illustrate the major concepts. The Cultural Proficiency Model as shown in Table 1 offers six points along the cultural proficiency continuum that indicate distinctive ways of seeing and responding to difference. As schools address the issues of diversity, the authors offer a description of specific behaviors in the five essential elements that must be present in a school and most importantly, within oneself in order to be culturally proficient. The five essential elements include one's ability to "value diversity, assess one's own culture, manage the dynamics of difference, institutionalize cultural knowledge, and adapt to diversity." (p. 39) These are viewed as a tool, a starting point of conversation, to equip the reader to be more successful with students who traditionally have not been successful in our current school structure. Table 1 Cultural Proficiency Continuum (p.31) Cultural destructiveness: The elimination of others people's cultures Cultural incapacity: Belief in the superiority of one's own culture and behavior that disempowers another's culture Cultural blindness: Acting as if the cultural differences one sees do not matter or not recognizing that there are differences among and between cultures Cultural precompetence: Awareness of the limitations one's skills or an organization's practices when interacting with other cultural groups Cultural competence: Interacting with other cultural groups using the five essential elements of cultural proficiency as the standard for individual behavior and school practices: acceptance and respect for difference; ongoing assessment of one's own and the organization's culture; attention to the dynamics of difference; continuous expansion of cultural knowledge and recourses; and the adaptation of one's values and behaviors and the organization's policies and practices Cultural proficiency: Esteeming culture; knowing how to learn about individual and organization culture; interacting effectively in a variety of cultural environments                  The authors' basic premise for the book is that change in schools is a combination of individual and organizational change. What the authors term as "inside-out" approach to change is that we must begin change first with ourselves then with our organizations. What they believe should be a fairly obvious issue is too often invisible to educational leaders. As populations change in schools, or as chronic underachievement is confronted, the authors assert that educators have indicated how "others" need to change (e.g., educators speak of how the disadvantage nature of groups leads to underachievement instead of what educators need to do differently to insure achievement).         Educational leaders fail to assess the growth needed within them in order to respond differently to students. We also fail to take stock of the school relative to the change that is needed in order to insure academic achievement for all students. Hence, the reinforcement of the need for change is "outside" of self. The message that is sent to students and the school community is that "those" children can't learn. As educational leaders, we have yet to become convinced that all children can and do succeed at high levels. Successful schools choose to equip themselves with the necessary skills and the capacity to adapt and change in order to make a difference in the academic lives of their students. The five essential elements of cultural proficiency describe behaviors that must be present within a school and within oneself in order to become culturally proficient educators.         A strength of the book is its presentation of a case story. The scenarios describe the work of the authors in schools and districts over the past ten years. They are factual and illustrate effectively each of the concepts that the authors present in the book. The case story approach allows the reader to systemically examine the culture of a school or district in terms of the behaviors that are exhibited. In order to achieve this mission, the authors offer a value base from which to integrate and build upon the information and skills presented. They call this value base the guiding principles. The guiding principles are based upon the assumption that: Culture is ever present, people are served in varying degrees by the dominant culture, people have group identities and personal identities, diversity within cultures is important and each group has unique cultural needs. With such a base, you can transform a daunting challenge into an opportunity that brings all people together to create a culturally proficient district or school. (p.43)         The guiding principles help the reader to recognize the importance of inviting and encouraging all groups and individuals to share in the responsibility for change.         The second part of the book is designed to raise issues that address the barriers to cultural proficiency. The chapters on overcoming resistance to change and entitlement describe the individual and institutional resistances to change in schools. The authors contend that change is possible and that when it is done successfully, processes like cultural proficiency become part of the cultural fabric of the organization.         The authors believe that the primary barriers to this much- needed change are the presumption of entitlement and unawareness of the need to adapt. They state: People with a presumption of entitlement believe that they have acquired all the personal achievements and societal benefits they have accrued solely on their own merit and character and therefore don't feel a need to release or reorder any societal organizational perquisites they may have. Unawareness of the need to adapt means failing to recognize the need to make personal and school changes in response to the diversity of people with whom one interacts simply because it never occurred that there was a problem. (p. 71)         According to the authors, the journey towards cultural proficiency begins with the awareness of the dynamics of entitlement. This is especially important to educators because most of us who teach in schools are products of the same educational system. The system taught us to transmit the values and cultural norms of the dominant culture to children. Most American teachers were educated by the universities to teach the Hollywood manufactured "Beaver Cleavers" of our society who enter our school system with more highly valued cultural capital. Therefore, most educators do not know what to do or how to proceed with students who enter our schools with cultural capital different from their own.         An example provided by the authors of how we transmit the norms and values of the dominant culture is our use of language. We use language based upon the norms of the dominant culture to describe students of color and poverty in an oppressive manner. Instead of using language that describes the students' strengths, educators use language that describes the discrepancy between the oppressed and entitled groups. In the following table, the authors present some of the more common terms. Table 2 Words Used to Describe Oppressed and Entitled Groups (p. 107) Oppressed Entitled     Inferior     Superior     Culturally Deprived     Privileged     Culturally Disadvantaged     Advantaged     Deficient     Normal     Different     Similar     Diverse     Uniform     Third World     First World     Minority     Majority     Underclass     Upper Class     Poor     Middle Class     Unskilled Workers     Leaders         By using the terms on the left column, the authors stress that such language continues to dehumanize people by objectifying them and blaming the victims for the oppression. As culturally proficient leaders we can assist each other to use language that is additive in nature and affirms the value of our students.         Educational leaders will face a variety of reactions as we introduce the concept of cultural proficiency. We will have to seek ways to address and overcome the barriers that are presented to us. It has been my experience that some people will acknowledge and understand the need for change and others will not. Even those who are eager to change may find it difficult because they encounter resistance. Dominant group members, white, straight men in particular, who are the most entitled members of our society, are challenged by Lindsey et al. to eliminate forms of oppression and create culturally proficient schools. This action would require that dominant group members understand their role in shifting the balance of power in order to end oppression, thereby creating schools where everyone in the school community has access to power. The personal responsibility to take such initiative would require a moral choice by those belonging to the dominant group. Similar to the white male educator described earlier, most of the members of the dominant culture in the United States do not see themselves as having more power and privilege than others in society. Therefore they view the responsibility to change the oppressed system as issues for the oppressed to worry about. This makes the goal of becoming culturally proficient leaders becomes even more difficult to achieve.         Legislative and judicial actions to resolve the imbalance of power have always been sought by the oppressed. The rights of African Americans and women had to be insured through the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Court mandates such as Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, serve as evidence that the struggle for equality requires much effort, sacrifice, and perseverance. When reading the book one is pressed recognize that oppressed groups seeking equality needed to be amended into the constitution in their quest for justice. On the other hand white straight men, as the unstated norm have never been amended into the constitution. Whether consciously or unconsciously they have enjoyed power, as manifested in the form of privilege or entitlement, as part of our history and economic status in this country. Even the most "advantaged" members of society benefit from learning about the privilege that accrues as a result of their entitled positions. It would only serve to make them more responsive and responsible members of society. Once we all understand this and accept the notion that some people receive entitlements based on gender and race and others have impediments placed before them based on gender and race, we can each take responsibility for our moral and ethical pursuit of becoming culturally proficient leaders.         From my experiences working with schools as a coach and facilitator, I have found that the chapters on the five essential elements, overcoming resistance to change, and entitlement, to be the most instructive and helpful as schools and organizations take on the task of becoming culturally proficient. However, there are three apparent weaknesses of the book. One is that not enough qualitative data on the successful use of the cultural proficiency model exist. Another is that the authors suggest no recommendations for institutions of higher education in preparing administrators for this kind of paradigm shifting work. Since the book is based on the assumption that our morals and values will guide us as we do this work, then the values that help administrators to compose their practice ought to be addressed and examined. Qualitative data on the use of language and dialogic forms of communication would be useful in examining the successful transformational practices of the cultural proficiency model in our schools.         Recommendations regarding the courses offered by institutions of higher education for administrative preparation programs would have been helpful. As administrators are prepared to become culturally responsive, they will need skills that help them to examine who they are and skills that will enable them to challenge the practices of privilege in our schools. It is important that administrators entering the field are knowledgeable about the strengths in style, ways of being, and values that diverse administrators bring to their work. If we were truly committed to developing a new form of practice, these perspectives would need to be included with deliberate and positive intent more than ever before in administrative preparation programs. Lastly, by placing oneself on the cultural proficiency continuum suggests that the goal to train leaders so that the "placement" is at the end of the continuum rather than sending the message that leaders need to be in a state of always becoming proficient. With this in mind, one could easily assume that the authors are grounded in a tradition of functionalism. However, the activities at the end of the book and around the case study would tend to position the book to promote reflective practice.         Still, Lindsey, Robbins, and Terrell, are insightful in that they propose no quick fixes. They recognize that the change process is a very complex undertaking. The authors do advocate though that three goals are kept in mind as culturally proficient leaders continue on this journey: Create an environment where people are comfortable and motivated to do their work. Point out aspects of the environment that demand change. Avoid demoralizing the people who will be required to change. (p. 86)         Our student body and our work places are more diverse than ever before. We realize that our abilities to understand and respond to differences in constructive ways are not what they could be. Although the book is a manual for school leaders, its design lends itself to any leader of any organization. It should not be limited only to schools. While the issues that we face in schools today are fundamentally important, cultural proficiency is a perspective from which all members of our society can benefit. This book advances our thinking and propels us to take a positive step into a paradigm of dialogue and new opportunities. About the Reviewer Brenda Campbell Jones is Executive Director, Azusa Pacific University, Menifee Campus. From 1993 until 2000, she was Executive director of the California School Leadership Academy.

Kennedy, Donald. (1997). Academic Duty. Reviewed by Courtney Welch, Texas Woman's University

Kennedy, Donald. (1997). Academic Duty. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Pp. 310 $29.95 (Cloth)         ISBN 0674002237 Reviewed by Courtney Welch Texas Woman's University April 20, 2001         In the 21st century, faculty and administrators in institutions of higher education are often confronted with complex situations that could lead them down the road of academic misconduct. As the Bing Professor of Environmental Sciences and the President Emeritus of Stanford University, Donald Kennedy has significant experience in the teaching and administrative world of a research university. Because of this experience he is no stranger to the institutional struggle between teaching and research as well as the complicated financial concerns between profit-making ventures and pure academic research.         His book Academic Duty contains intensely personal insights and reflections that illuminate and identify the responsibilities that faculty and administrators need to strive toward in order to serve their university and students. Kennedy's book emerged as the product of a challenging and productive seminar that focused on "shaping" Stanford graduate students for various academic careers. "I have tried," he writes, "to engage future faculty members with a vision of academic duty that includes the responsibilities to put students first and to restore the values of institutional commitment and loyalty" (p. vii). Kennedy asserted that faculty and administrators in higher education must strive toward these duties in order to maintain an ethical and educational balance of research, peer review, grants, teaching, and publication. Kennedy claimed that "within the university itself, administrative responsibility is a key ingredient in the design of the institution's objectives." (p. 279)         He maintained that university faculty should not only concentrate on publishing and research but "advance the capacities and potentialities of the next generation" through effective teaching and mentoring (p. 22). According to Kennedy, the edification as well as the education of students should be "at the very core of the university's mission and the faculty's academic duty." (p. 59) In his fourth chapter, entitled To Mentor, Kennedy maintained that mentoring is not just a statistical part of a faculty teaching load but an ethical duty of the highest order. He also claimed that the current climate of poor graduate training, pertaining to the many temptations within the academic arena, could be the deep- rooted cause of the continual ethical problems among university faculty.         Kennedy is quick to qualify that academic duty, if conducted correctly, would not only be complimentary but supportive of academic freedom. He maintained that in a democratic society "liberty and duty, freedom and responsibility" are the opposite sides of the same coin (p. 2). Kennedy writes not as an outsider chastising academia, but as one who appreciates and acknowledges the distinct culture and problems of working in an academic climate. The strongest and most troubling elements of Kennedy's work is the exploration of misconduct among university researchers, the misleading direction of graduate advisors, and the unethical grant-seeking activity among university professors in the culture of a research university. Kennedy expertly reconstructed informative and enlightening case studies and anecdotes that illustrated the ethical challenges and temptations that exist in higher education.         The three most pivotal and interesting chapters in Kennedy's work are those entitled "To Teach" (Chapter 3), "To Publish" (Chapter 7), and "To Tell the Truth" (Chapter 8). Within these chapters, Kennedy exposes the outrageous and subtle ways that research faculty and university administrators bend their ethics to the breaking point. Kennedy asserted that most professors are not prepared for the teaching requirements or the intense pressure of authorship at a research university. He reminded those working in an academic culture that ethical dilemmas are not limited to plagiarizing or falsifying research, but can also pertain to a professor requiring his students to buy the book he authored in order to receive more royalties. According to Kennedy, both situations are considered violations of "academic duty." Kennedy staggered this reviewer by claiming that "more than 75 percent of all papers are never cited . . . and even in certain fields the percentage of noncitation is even higher." (p. 193) His implication for the necessity of teaching ethics, especially in terms of research and publishing, to faculty and administrators in higher education is clearly conveyed and should seriously be considered.         Kennedy's work is spellbinding, enlightening, and highly readable. Academic Duty has only one limitation in that it only investigated ethical issues at a research university. Within his endnotes, Kennedy provided a rich and dazzling list of resources that not only supported his thesis but also encouraged educational researchers to investigate the role of academic duty within theological seminaries, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. Kennedy, in an effort to expose the research university culture, writes from both his positive and negative experiences in higher education to encourage a stronger sense of duty within this culture. He maintained that for a true cultural change to occur, institutions of higher education must strengthen their mission and duty to the development of the next generation. Ultimately, Kennedy concluded that, "the difficulty is that they (research institutions) are both successful and prestigious, and they lack the natural appetite for renovation and reform that characterizes the striving, transforming institutions. But unless they change, little else will." (p. 287)         Kennedy has identified many ethical problems within the research university and has "thrown down the gauntlet." Let us hope that faculty and administrators will be encouraged by this challenge. On a personal note, this reviewer recommends that this book should be required reading for all faculty and administrators within their first year of employment. Overall, this reviewer contends that Donald Kennedy has made a valuable contribution to the growing literature on ethics and duty among those who work, research, and teach in higher education. About the Reviewer Courtney Welch is a graduate of Baylor University in Waco, Texas and is currently an adjunct professor in the history department at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas and a history instructor at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas. She is pursuing a doctorate in higher education administration at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Her research interests include higher education law, student development, and curriculum development.

Ravitch, Diane (2000). Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. Reviewed by Herbert Zimiles, Arizona State University

Ravitch, Diane (2000). Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. New York: Simon & Schuster. Pp. 555 $30 (Cloth)             ISBN 0684844176 Reviewed by Herbert Zimiles Arizona State University May 8, 2001 Related review In her chronicle of twentieth century educational reform, provocatively yet ambiguously entitled Left Back, Diane Ravitch presents a divided self. On the one hand, the historian in her is intent upon recounting the important story of efforts to bring about educational reform during the past century On the other, the book serves as a sounding board for the advocacy of traditional education; Ravitch is almost obsessively preoccupied with promoting what she terms the teaching of subject matter, with mourning its decline and advocating its restoration to the position of primacy it once held until it was undone by the story's scapegoat, progressive education. The book was written to document what she regards to be the disastrous rerouting, nothing short of the undoing, of American education, by the progressive education movement. The ebb and flow of objectivity is disconcerting: one moment the reader is caught up in the fascinating history of educational reform and in the next is sorting through tangled arguments and innuendos that lay the blame for education's failures and misadventures at the clumsy, misdirected feet of progressive education. And yet, Ravitch's appetite and talent for assembling the salient historical events and writing about them in brisk and interesting fashion often prevails. As a result, the book will be useful, if not appealing, even to those who do not share her conservative perspective. One of the devices she uses to expose the folly of her adversaries is to provide generous quotations of their rhetoric. But not everyone will see the exciting early formulations of progressive educational thought in the same dingy light as does Ravitch. To this reader many of the passages cited by her, by Dewey, Kilpatrick and other leaders of the movement, highlight the creativity and the profundity of thought that guided the progressive education movement. They underscore the extraordinary combination of philosophical and sociopolitical analysis and psychological sensitivity that gave rise to an ideology that was translated into a program for educational and social reform. In its depth and scope, and its daring readiness to change both the goals and methods of American education as a way of introducing greater democracy and vitality to American society, it was a movement of unparalleled originality and vision.             To be sure this new rhetoric attracted unbalanced as well as stable and intelligent followers, and led to a wide range of interpretations and implementations some of which were wild. Ravitch delights in describing such misadventures as a way to discredit the entire movement, but it would seem more apt to look at the remarkable implementations that were carried off than to dwell on its failures. Indeed, even Ravitch is forced to concede that the Dewey School (housed at Columbia University) that spanned an eight-year period at the turn of the century was "very likely one of the most exciting schools in American history." But she hastens to attribute the school's admittedly exceptional accomplishments to the specialness of the children who attended, the giftedness of its teachers and the unusual materials that were made available. It is undoubtedly true that progressive education is at its best when implemented under optimal circumstances with children who are ready and capable of tasting the fruits of the freedom of exploration and self-expression that it affords. Although it represents a mode of education that encompasses elements that are capable of benefitting all children, the gains that it brings are likely to be proportional to the degree to which the values and regimens of classroom life match those experienced at home. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that the implementation of progressive education is capable of overcoming the obstacles to educational progress that are encountered by children whose lives are filled with experiences of oppression and deprivation. One of the errors made by Ravitch is her naive belief that the massive production of progressive rhetoric that appeared in the educational journals was accompanied by corresponding changes in the enactment of educational programs. In fact, not all teachers agreed with or even understood the literature disseminated by the progressive movement, and among those who sympathized with the positions so passionately and convincingly stated in the journals, many found that the administration of the school in which they worked would not support the organizational changes that were required. This reader passed through the New York City school system during the peak of the alleged transformation of the schools without seeing evidence of the radical curricular and teaching changes that Ravitch claims to have swept the schools. The impact of progressive education has been uneven, and has taken effect more slowly than she suggests, but it has nevertheless been substantial. Ravitch reminds us that the roots of the progressive education movement were in evidence prior to the onset of the twentieth century. She provides ample snippets of the musings of G. Stanley Hall, the founder of the child study movement, mainly to ridicule what she believes to be his hyperbolic absurdities, and also to show that many of the features of progressive thought were voiced, if not originated, by him. Without inventing the term, Hall was surely one of the prophets of "child-centered" education. Among the first to think systematically and insightfully about the psychological development of the child, Hall could not fail to notice the mismatch between the natural curiosities and explorations of the young child and the abstruseness and irrelevance of the educators' methods and agenda.. He also pointed to the wide band of variation in ability and educational interests of children, and the need to design programs that would take into account and be responsive to the range of different abilities and destinies. His attention to the existence of differences in ability and readiness for academic learning and the audacity he showed in questioning the utility of traditional academic subject matter are made to appear ludicrous, and even more unfairly, undemocratic. In Ravitch's eyes there are no redeeming features to progressive education. The degree to which she is almost mystically drawn to restore and perpetuate archaic and arcane modes of education, her unwillingness to acknowledge that there was surely great room for improvement and rethinking of the educational canons and the stale and oppressive pedagogical methods of the nineteenth century, (the perpetuation of scholasticism) is a study in blind stubbornness. Upon reading Ravitch, one is reminded that the clash between educational progressives and conservatives has to do not only with their political attitudes and social values but with large differences in their awareness of and attention to the role of the psychological domain. The twentieth century will be remembered as the era of the onset of psychological awareness, the time when the rationale and the methods for psychotherapy and other forms of psychological intervention were devised. During part of that time period, at any given moment more than half of all hospitalized patients in the United States suffered from psychological disorders rather than physical illness or disability. And yet, issues of psychological comfort and psychological well-being are hardly mentioned by Ravitch; the progressives' concern with such matters is treated with derision. The idea that traditional schools constituted oppressive environments by virtue of their authoritarian social structure and their intimidating social climate are made to seem far-fetched or unimportant. The call for infusing classroom life with meaningfulness and relevance is similarly dismissed as little more than a diversionary frill and a rhetorical gesture. The ease with which Ravitch brushes aside such matters gives rise to the suggestion that one of the reasons for the factional differences in theory and practice that divide American educators is that there exists a bimodal distribution of psychological sensitivity. It would seem that many people have so habituated to the social stratification of society, to the exploitation of the weak by the strong and the pervasiveness of inequity, that they are not offended by the authoritarianism of traditional education. Having themselves adopted a "grin and bear it" mentality, they further believe that it is natural for students to assimilate and internalize the meanings and the values held by their teachers, however alien, confusing and impractical they may seem to be. Since some students succeed in making such identifications and go on to achieve academic success, it is somehow (incorrectly) assumed that it is a pathway that is open to all. Ravitch seems indifferent, even contemptuous of concerns about the psychological context of schooling. That she has little interest and meager knowledge about matters pertaining to psychological well-being is further evidenced by the fact that she incorrectly describes Carl Rogers, the leader of the non-directive ("client-centered") therapy movement, as a psychoanalyst. When Ravitch points to the small proportion of students who succeeded in graduating from high school more than a hundred years ago and then observes the steady rise in such numbers over the years, she seems unaware of the role played by changes in the social climate of the school effected by progressive methods and thought. Teacher-student relationships have become more friendly and relaxed and educational discourse more meaningful as a result of the influence of progressive education. School has become a less forbidding, less unfathomable part of the child's life experience. Instead of crediting progressive education with bringing about a massive improvement in the child's quality of life in school and in the meaningfulness and understandability of the instructional process, Ravitch tendentiously charges it with elitism. She accuses progressive education of imposing arbitrary limits on the educational progress of some students by offering alternative, vocational education pathways and by championing psychological testing methods that gave rise to systems of student tracking. It may well be that G. Stanley Hall and the early psychologists who were interested in children's development regarded the then new methods of psychological testing as part of a new wave of scientific psychology that would guide the design and management of the new education, but disenchantment with the crudity of information derived from testing, and as a consequence, staunch opposition to educational testing, is most visible in progressive educational circles. In the end, as she does throughout her book, without explanation and reasonable justification or evidence for her conviction—a conviction that flies in the face of experience and rationality—Ravitch calls for a return to the scholastic mode of education of the distant past as the most effective route to educating all children. What this historian labels in her subtitle as "a century of failed school reforms" is much better described as one hundred years of immensely expanded educational services that were delivered to increasingly larger sectors of society. Ravitch refers to the soaring numbers of children in school, but fails to acknowledge that whereas high schools of a hundred years ago were mainly open to only the most privileged children and only a handful of them were expected to graduate, today there are strenuous efforts to reduce the high school drop-out rate to zero. Not only are the schools of today called upon to serve vastly larger numbers of children, they are expected to deliver many more services and to reach children with a much wider range of ability and cultural background. In the face of these facts that are shouting at us, it seems mischievous and irresponsible to speak of the schools as failing and to refer to the failure of educational reform. What is overlooked in the continuing fierce debate about how best to educate all the children is that not all of the children are ready to be educated—because of the undermining experience of alienation and poverty, the lack of emotional and cognitive support their families are capable of providing, and the distracting influence of social change and family instability. About the Reviewer Herbert Zimiles is Professor in the Division of Psychology in Education of the College of Education at Arizona State University. He earned a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at the University of Rochester in 1956. Zimiles, a developmental psychologist, served as Director of Research at the Bank Street College of Education from 1956 to 1986.

John-Steiner, Vera. (2000). Creative Collaboration. Reviewed by Elizabeth Creamer, Virginia Tech

John-Steiner, Vera. (2000). Creative Collaboration. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 259 + xii $29.95         ISBN 0-19-506794-0 Reviewed by Elizabeth Creamer, Virginia Tech May 14, 2001 Following her award winning first book, Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking, first published in 1985, Vera John-Steiner's 2000 book, Creative Collaboration deals with the topic and creativity and innovation among artists and scientists working both within and outside of an academic setting. Both books take a developmental view of creativity, looking at the evolution of an idea over time. Creative Collaboration picks up on the role of collaboration in innovation, a sub-theme in the first book. Collaborations that results in innovation are those "that lead to change in their domain's dominant paradigms" (2000, p. 196). They involve intense dialogue over a prolonged period of time, are motivated by a desire to transform knowledge, and integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines. John-Steiner grounds her approach in the theoretical work of L. S. Vygotsky, illustrating how creative thought and collaboration occurs within a social-historical context. This social-historical view interprets creative activities as social and the construction of knowledge as "embedded in the cultural and historical milieu in which it arises" (2000, p. 5). Challenging the view of cognition as in individualized process, she characterizes thinking and creativity as a social process that can involve intense and prolonged engagement and interaction. Rather than derailing collaboration, John-Steiner suggests that the willingness to tackle differences in viewpoint is a characteristic of long-term collaborations that lead to innovation. She observes: "Collaboration thrives on diversity of perspectives and constructive dialogue between individuals negotiating their differences while creating their shared voices and visions" (John-Steiner, 2000, p. 6). A second key element about how collaboration is associated with innovation is through what John-Steiner labels as mutual appropriation. This is when collaborators develop a deep familiarity with each other's ideas and a shared knowledge base that is only possible through prolonged engagement and intense interaction about ideas. A third element of when collaboration is associated with innovation is when there is both trust and shared risk taking. Risk taking, John-Steiner argues, is especially characteristic in paradigm shifting work. "Creative work requires a trust in oneself that is virtually impossible to sustain alone," she observes (2000, p. 8). John-Steiner's life-span perspective is also reflected in her view of identity and how it is evolves within collaboration. She sees identity as fluid and changing over time. She casts identity development as relational or occurring in relation to significant others. Individual identity, she argues, is a synthesis of the qualities of multiple role models and influences. Collaboration contributes to vitality by supporting the on-going development of a "changing self. " Her views contrasts that of many developmental theorists who cast identity development, even among adults, as occurring along a continuum that has a clear endpoint "akin to a physical peak capacity which is then followed by decline" (2000, p. 188). Her view is consistent with the depiction of faculty careers as fluid and developmental (Weiland, 1995). John-Steiner's methodology is an intriguing marinade of methods. A Presidential Professor of Linguistics and Education at the University of New Mexico, her sources of data include personal interviews, autobiographical materials, narrative accounts, and a method called a "Collaboration Q-sort." In this she asked individual collaborators to rank the relevance a series of statements that might characterize the collaborative relationship and process. She then brought the two collaborators together and asked them to discuss differences in their perceptions. The book is liberally sprinkled with examples of "experienced thinkers" from the physical sciences, math, philosophy, social sciences, and the visual and creative arts. Some of the most vivid accounts, such as the collaboration between Picasso and Braque that led to the development of Cubism as an art form, are based on a careful reading of historical documents. Having recently completed a book on collaboration among dual-career faculty couples (Creamer, 2001), one of the most exciting things for me about reading this book, was to open to the first chapter to find that it deals with the work accomplished by intimate partners. In this, John-Steiner revisits some historical figures, such as Marie and Pierre Curie whose working relationship has been documented elsewhere (Pycior, 1987), but also presents some more contemporary examples, such as the writers Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris. She provides an engrossing description, for example, of the evolution of the working arrangement between Will and Ariel Durant, detailing how over time Will and Ariel became a co-equal in the roles they played in producing a multi-volume work on the history of civilization. Supporting an argument I presented in Working Equal: Academic Couples as Collaborators (Creamer, 2001), she points to examples of egalitarianism among intimate heterosexual partners. These are couples who successfully combine both personal and personal lives and who are committed to equality and overcoming stereotypical gender roles in the division of labor both in work and in the household. Her work adds to the literature that provides a counterpoint to earlier feminist portraits of such relationship as inevitably asymmetrical. It challenges scholars of the family in both in sociology and family studies to consider the division of labor in jointly accomplished professional work as an index of egalitarianism, rather than to focus exclusively on division of labor in private matters of the household. Recognition of the potential for egalitarianism among cross-sex collaborators with an intimate partner is only one of several positions taken by John-Steiner that reflect what could be characterized as that of a third-wave feminist. She devotes a chapter to collaboration and women and provides a good mix of examples of collaborators that include women. Within the first six pages of the book, she recognizes that her work is grounded in what she identifies as the feminist concepts of relational dynamics and feminist ways of knowing. Relational dynamics refers to the idea that individual identity or a sense of self develops in the context of important relationships. Feminist perspectives on ways of knowing, John-Steiner asserts, challenge the idea of individuation and autonomy and emphasize mutuality and interdependence instead. She extends the earlier work she credits, however, by illustrating that these concepts apply equally to relationships among men as well as among men and women as they do do to relationships among women. This is an important contribution of the book. The book will be of interest to scholars in a number of areas including interdisciplinary scholars and those in a number of areas in education. These include those who study creativity, as well as those in higher education who study faculty lives and cultures. Although the tie is not one that is discussed, the book has clear connections to the literature that examines processes that foster the co- construction of knowledge, such as those that look at learning communities and communal forms of knowing. A sub- text rather than a main theme, John-Steiner's exploration of identity will be of interest to those who work on the topic of adult identity development. The Q-sort method described in an appendix, which she describes as a method often used in personality research, could readily be adapted to other topics as well, including to test some existing models of feminist and racial identity. Another way that John-Steiner's book contributes to the literature is in the refreshing view of mentoring relationships that she offers. Rather than freeze-framing mentoring relationships as forever asymmetrical, John- Steiner's developmental perspective recasts mentoring as a relationship that under the best of circumstances can evolve over time to become a symmetrical relationship among co- equals. Although the literature about mentoring is extensive, it is not generally from a life-span perspective. Of most relevance to the topic of the collaboration that is central to the book, John-Steiner presents some original views about long-term collaboration. Consistent with her social-cultural perspective, in the last chapter she moves from an exclusively dyadic focus on collaboration to one that sets it within what she labels as thought communities. Thought communities are defined as "groups of experienced thinkers who engage in intense interaction with each other while promoting a perspective shift in their discipline" (2000, p. 6). "The sustainability of collaboration depends on the supporting structures in which it is embedded" (2000, p. 202), John-Steiner maintains. That means that while a pair of collaborators may make the most direct contribution to an innovation, that they are likely to be simultaneously engaged with a community of like-minded colleagues who make less visible contributions but are vital to stimulating and sustaining the effort. Thought communities are distinguished from cooperative teams by mutuality and trust that, according to John-Steiner, is vital for the risk taking necessary for genuine innovation. They often develop their own distinct culture. Casting long- term collaborative dyads within a larger community of colleagues and the culture they create is an important contribution of this book. In the last chapter, John-Steiner extends the discussion among those researching the process of collaboration by sketching a model that distinguishes four different patterns of collaboration. She identifies these as (a) distributed collaboration, (b) complementary collaboration, (c) family collaboration, and (d) integrative collaboration. Because the chapter is about thought communities, I am unclear as to whether the model applies to dyads, which is the subject of most of the examples she uses as illustrations, or to a the larger thought community in which they are likely to be engaged. The four collaborative patterns identified by John-Steiner are distinguished by the roles assumed by collaborators, the extent that values are shared, and working methods which may or may not be discipline-based. The patterns utilized by collaborators evolve over time. Collaborators may initially organize their work following one pattern, but then mutate to another pattern. While the pattern she identifies as complementary collaboration, with its clear division of labor and discipline-based working methods, is the one that is most commonly utilized, it is not the one she associates with innovation. Instead, she argues that an integrative pattern of collaboration, with interchangeable roles in the division of labor and integration of knowledge across disciplines, is most likely to produce innovation. In this analysis, John-Steiner links dynamics of the collaborative process to innovation. She confirms the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship by associating the integration of knowledge across disciplines as a hallmark of innovation. The model she offers of different collaborative patterns offers a promising premise for future research. John-Steiner's completely engrossing and elegantly written first book is a hard act to follow. It won the 1990 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and has gone through multiple printings. The critiques I might offer of her 2000 book are minor. A number of propositions she characterizes in the text as significant, such as about identity as relational, are only briefly sketched. In what I imagine was an oversight, I was surprised to find, for example, that the word, identity, is not listed in the index. At times the descriptions of the collaborations are so expansive as to outweigh the analytic point she is making. In what may be an inevitable by-product of methods that combine traditional social science methods with historical research, the combination of historical and contemporary figures is sometime disconcerting. Within the first ten pages, John-Steiner offers a surprising caveat to the book, given its stated grounding in a social- cultural theoretical perspective. John-Steiner notes: "In this book, historical, cultural, and institutional conditions, which shape the nature and meaning of collaboration, are not treated in depth" (2000, p. 9). While this well could be an overstatement on John-Steiner's part, it does underscore that her focus is on the relational aspects of collaborations that have resulted in significant innovations. She had not the space to develop the full historical context of some of the famous alliances she describes, such as the one between Charles Darwin and his mentor, Charles Lyell. Influential institutional and environmental factors that support collaboration are indeed absent, as they are in the accounts of collaborators presented in my book. This may be because collaborators often fail to identify them. A reader cannot fail but to be impressed by the scope of John-Steiner's literary palette in that she describes with alacrity famous collaborators in fields as diverse as science, music, and art. She seems as comfortable describing the development of innovation in art, dance, and music as she with those associated with scientific inventions. The breadth of her knowledge and reading is clearly evident in the inspiring array of literature cited in her reference list and endnotes which in itself provides a strong endorsement for an interdisciplinary perspective. They range from fictional works, poetry, to intellectual biography and well-known works in the history and the social sciences. Above all, John-Steiner is certainly successful in offering vivid alternative narratives that respond to her criticism that most of the literature on collaboration focuses on cognition while overlooking the power of relational dynamics. References Creamer, E. G., & Associates (2001). Working equal: Academic couples as collaborators. New York, NY: Routledge-Falmer Press. John-Steiner, V. (1997). Notebooks of the mind: Explorations of thinking. New York: New York. Oxford University Press. (Revised edition) Pycior, H. M. (1987). Marie Curie's anti-natural path. In P. G. Abir-Am and D. Outram (Eds.), Uneasy careers and intimate lives: Women in science, 1789-1979. New Brunswick: NJ: Rutgers University Press. Weiland, S. (1995). "Belonging to romanticism": Discipline, specialty, and academic identity. Review of Higher Education, 18(3), 265-292. About the Reviewer Dr. Elizabeth G. Creamer is an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech. She teaches courses in Women's Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, and in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. While her faculty appointment is in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech, her training is in the field of higher education. Her research interests focus on faculty work and cultures. Most of her work explores the nature of the personal and working lives of faculty who have strong or extraordinary publication records. Her interest in collaboration, including among academic couples, grew out of a long-term research project that involves interviewing prolific faculty members about the factors they associate with their productivity.

Apple, Michael W. (1996) Cultural Politics and Education. Reviewed by Dieter Misgeld, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto

Apple, Michael W. (1996) Cultural Politics and Education. New York: Teachers College Press. Columbia University. 176 pp. $18.95 (Paper)     ISBN: 0807735035 $40 (Cloth)     ISBN: 0807735043 Reviewed by Dieter Misgeld The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto May 21, 2001 Apple's book was begun as a text, an "outline" as he says, for the John Dewey Lecture in 1992. It continues themes taken up in previous publications and once again profiles a tendency very characteristic of this outstanding educational theorist: to find ways to connect theory with the practice of (progressive) educators and with the community, to connect (as he says at the end of the book) the "global with the local" (p. 115), and to generally introduce a perspective on education and the schools which links them very clearly with the larger society, especially the economy, but never loses sight of what is specific to the educational effort itself. Thus students, young people, teachers, neighbourhoods and parents become and remain very real in the pages of this book. This is quite an achievement for a book which otherwise also deals with weighty theoretical matters and includes quite a range of empirical materials as well. Given this range, it is important to mention that two chapters out of five have coauthors: Anita Oliver for Chapter Three and Christopher Zenk for Chapter Four. The book critically investigates conservative tendencies in education with specific reference to the most recent and very determined attempts, on the part of neoconservative and neoliberal Movements of the Political "Right" in the United States, to restructure education (as well as other areas of culture) and to remove all those themes and concerns from the educational agenda which have been introduced by the movements of the "Cultural Left" in the U.S., by feminism and antiracism, the gay movement, etc. Apple shows, however, that the fundamental force of the (neo) conservative/neoliberal push for restructuring education derives from an old and deep-seated conviction that the hierarchy of social class in existence in the U.S. needs to be defended, indeed to be made invincible, that class-hierarchy rests upon merit, educational and otherwise, and that competitive market orientations are the decisive factors propelling society onward. These, say the conservatives, deserve to be recognized as representing the sounder side of society. This is why Apple makes a critical discussion of proposals for national curricula, national testing, and marketized "choice" plans a centrepiece of his argument (Chapter Two). In Chapter Four, he and Zenk give a systematic review of the "moral" crisis of the U.S. economy and of its implications for schooling and the schools. The "moral" crisis--if I may call it thus--consists in an increasing gap between rich and poor, between "people of colour" (apart, perhaps, from those of East-Asian descent) and Euro- Americans. It consists in a growing level of child poverty ("one out of every four children under the age of six" lives in poverty, p. 74), which puts the U.S. behind other major industrialized countries, including Great Britain. It includes other dimensions as well, such as the growing rate of incarceration for Black and Latino men, or the growth of low-paying, repetitive work. The authors argue in this chapter that the Political "Right" wants to ignore these problems by concentrating on "dropouts" from the school-system and youth at risk (p. 90), and even by launching an all-out assault on public schooling, in favour of substituting for it a system which functions like a market open to consumer choices through voucher plans and tax- credits (p. 98), and by a continuous monitoring of teacher and student competencies and learning outcomes, "thereby centralizing even more the control over teaching and curricula" (p. 99). Apple and Zenk complete this picture by drawing attention to the efforts to reform the curriculum in a strongly neo- conservative/neoliberal direction stressing family, free enterprise, patriotism, Christianity, etc., and by "making the needs of business and industry into the goals of education" (p. 99). Overall, public schools will be seen (in this picture from the "Right") as responsible for the economic crisis, but also, the authors point out, as the solution, assuming they can be redesigned (p. 68). The authors argue convincingly that this is an implausible view. Neither are most economic and social problems due to what does or may go wrong in or with the schools, nor is it the case that the schools can make up for the failure of society to provide meaningful jobs, decent health-care and housing, etc. The arguments given here are direct and well-founded, even if they will not convince those committed to the programme of the "Right." Their strength rather lies in the ability of the authors, to draw the attention of those critical of the programme of the "Right" to the complexity of the situation and to show that questions of larger social and political movements cannot be screened out from educational theory nor should educational theory and reflection on practice simply be reduced to political economy. In addition, Apple in particular notes (in this and in other chapters) that the conservative movement is one of the strongest and most transformative of the century and therefore needs to be examined with care and diligence, by one's taking seriously its motives and reasons rather than replying by invoking highly theoretical jargon. (Here an occasional critical aside against postmodernist/poststructuralist theorizing in education may be noted.) The theme of the strength of the conservative movement and the investigation of its constitution preoccupy Apple in other chapters as well, such as in Chapters Three and Five (conclusion). Chapter Three actually is the most compelling and startling one, while Chapter Five has a forthright directness rarely found in academic writing. Chapter Three examines the emergence of a cohesive neoconservative orientation in a particular school-district. Anita Oliver and Apple want to answer one question: "How does the Right get formed?" (p. 45). They take the position that the new conservative consensus often is built in response to a variety of accidental factors, and does not simply amount to the execution of a master-plan, down to the particulars of educational practice in local settings. The authors thus move away from any conspirational theory of the New Conservativism so common among members of the "Cultural Left" and attempt to show that this movement gives shape to common and popular conceptions of what is going wrong in and with American society. It does not simply exploit these conceptions and sentiments either. They show that the building of "Right-Wing" consensus is a political process, as would be the building of a "Left-Wing" one. Thus there is no escape from a reflection on particular actions and policies, arguments and initiatives. Oliver and Apple develop their argument by focusing on a controversy regarding the adoption of a text book, treating it as an instance of what counts as official knowledge in the schools (here Apple also alludes to a previous book of his). They show that a parental challenge to a particular textbook to be adopted was met by a bureaucratically/managerially preprepared response, meant to hold grass-roots or parental criticism at bay and implying, on the part of the school administration and of board-officials, that any such "grass-roots" criticism could only be unenlightened and "Right- wing" anyway. Here the authors have identified a most important step in the emergence of many Right-Wing movements, from European Fascism (Nazism) to the Anglo-American "New Right": These movements avail themselves of the protest-potential to be found among people disappointed by bureaucracy, technocracy, and expert rule. A political position (and condemnation) is quickly achieved, when these structures are associated with the "State" and interpreted to reflect a loss and erosion of community, as happens in the U.S. (more than elsewhere at present). Thus the fear that social solidarity might be disintegrating, is mobilized and directed toward the constitution of an educational and moral code which is to reestablish social cohesion. It is at this point that "Rightist" tendencies may become dangerous and one should not hesitate to once again reflect on Fascism (and the racism and anti-intellectualism built into it), in order to be forewarned. Apple and Oliver succeed in showing how a series of errors and a lack of understanding on the part of an insensitive and powerful administrative apparatus may mobilize and crystallize popular sentiment such that a populist interpretation of state action arises and a well-designed or educationally promising text becomes seen as an undemocratic imposition and misleads people to believe that neoconservative and (possibly) Christian fundamentalist values are actually democratic and perhaps more democratic than those represented by well-meaning educational specialists and academics regularly involved in the examination of curricular materials, etc. Apple and Oliver show, in essence, that at bottom the conflict is about democracy and the place of education in democratic development. The question is how an educational project can be defended which helps people accept and learn to be at home in open situations such that they are not afraid of conflict. In the conclusion (Chapter Five), Apple addresses this issue. For him problems of learning in contemporary schools in the U.S. are really "about competing social visions" (p. 97). He mentions as the greatest failing of the neoliberal/neoconservative reform- movement that it refuses to situate its curricular and other reform proposals in the larger context of "democratic education and a more democratic society" (p. 97). Quite appropriately Apple discusses how John Dewey still had a conception of such a context and redesigned vocational education on this basis. Apple then proceeds to praise a proposal made by the Ontario Federation of Labour in Canada which echoes the Deweyan tradition. He thus prepares the reader for his concluding argument that "nonreformist reforms" (p. 107) are the best course to follow. They are a combination of political and educational approaches taken toward schooling. In the pursuit of "nonreformist reforms" matters of social justice and of social equality continue to be addressed, often by acting critically upon the daily practical details of classroom situations. But in this approach steps toward reform also remain linked to "a larger social vision and to a larger social movement" (p. 109). It almost goes without saying that this argument implies a defense of the public school in the U.S. I believe that Apple's book (together with his previous ones) is very important under present conditions and helps one maintain a perspective on educational as well as human and social development which was first articulated by John Dewey and has since then become an American tradition. Those living in other countries, such as myself, have been greatly impressed by it. Apple helps us reidentify its contours. This holds true even if he introduces a more strongly political element than was typical of the progressivist tradition. But this is a requirement of the times, as much as a feature of Apple as an educational theorist. Apple's lectures collected in this book also help one see through the pretentious radicalism of much postmodernist and poststructuralist educational criticism which frequently remains unburdened by a concern for the daily detail of life in schools. Overall the most important lesson of the book is not to underestimate the force and coherence of the new conservative attack on the liberal and progressivist educational agenda. At present it matters more to come to terms with this movement as a whole and its power of attraction than to receive detailed practical instruction on how to respond to it. It is this understanding which Apple helps the reader achieve, and in quite a compelling, concrete and comprehensible way. About the Reviewer Dieter Misgeld Department of Theory and Policy Studies The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto

Schmidt, Jeff. (2000) Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes their Lives. Reviewed by Andi O'Conor, Ohio University

Schmidt, Jeff. (2000) Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes their Lives. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman &Littlefield; Pp. 304 $26.95 (Cloth)         ISBN #0-8476-9364-3 Reviewed by Andi O'Conor Ohio University December 11, 2000             Disciplined Minds is a radical, disturbing, and provocative look at professional life. It offers a profound analysis of the personal struggles for identity and meaning in the lives of today's 21 million professionals. The book will shake up readers, particularly faculty members, graduate students, and others who participate in academic life.             This book represents critical theory in the best sense of the tradition: it is a well-written, compelling description of how graduate school, as well as professional training and practice, help reproduce social, political, and economic stratification. Luckily, this book also offers disheartened graduate students, soul- weary professors, and frustrated professionals a better understanding of the structural conditions that constrain their professional work, and ways to combat the conformity that is endemic to academic life.             Schmidt begins by discussing what he calls "widespread career burnout" among professionals—the chronic "workaholism," fatigue, isolation and depression common among many professionals today. "Professionals," he writes, "are not happy campers … Ironically, such depression is most likely to hit the most devoted professionals—those who have been the most deeply involved with their work. You can't burn out if you've never been on fire" (pp. 1-2). The hidden root of this burnout and depression, Schmidt contends, is the professional's lack of political control over his or her creative work. In addition, the dissonance between the early goals of many professionals (e.g., to make a difference, to pursue a social vision, to better oneself and society) and the relative powerlessness of professional practice creates disillusionment. According to Schmidt, graduate and professional schools are intellectual "boot camps" that systematically grind down students' spirit and ultimately produce obedient, rather than independent thinkers. Timid Professionals             In Part One, "Timid Professionals," Schmidt outlines his basic thesis, that university professors, executives, and other professionals are trained to reproduce the inherently conservative and non-questioning ideology of large corporations, universities, and government agencies. Rather than fostering creativity, autonomy, and personal empowerment, professional schools create a skilled group of individuals who learn to subordinate their own goals to the goals of the institution. He claims that professional training produces "servants, not critics" (p.175).             To qualify for professional training and employment, individuals must exercise what Schmidt calls "ideological discipline," the ability to approach work with creativity and enthusiasm, but without questioning or seriously challenging the overall conservative and socially reproductive goals of the institution or employer. He writes, "The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate, and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology. The political and intellectual timidity of today's most highly educated employees is no accident." (p. 16)             One intriguing aspect of this book is Schmidt's definition of the commonly used but rarely defined word, "professional." He cautions against confusing the term with "white collar worker," and claims that most white collar workers today are non-professionals. He categorizes lawyers, teachers, counselors, nurses, doctors, engineers, scientists, professors, actors, and executives as professionals. He excludes from his definition of professionals those who hire and fire professionals (e.g., upper level-executives) as well as para-professionals such as clerical workers, paralegals and teachers' aides. What distinguishes a professional, he claims, is not just advanced knowledge and technical skill, but advanced schooling or "paper credentials." Professionals are a product of the schools.            Schmidt challenges the popular belief that professionals are independent practitioners, such as self-employed doctors or lawyers. He writes that the overwhelming majority of professionals (i.e., 8 out of 9) are salaried employees rather than independent practitioners. Thus, when writing about professionals, he has salaried employees in mind. Schmidt also critiques the widespread belief that today's professionals embody neutrality. Arguing that professionals are indeed politically committed, Schmidt writes, "Many people naively think of professionals as nonprofessionals who possess additional technical knowledge or technical skills. Professionals do exercise technical skills, of course, but it is their use of political skills that distinguishes them from nonprofessionals. The product of professional labor is political. It takes sides." (p. 41)             From Schmidt's perspective, professionals' own view of themselves as politically neutral supports their political commitments. By posing as disinterested experts, professionals actually serve the interests of the dominant class.             Schmidt also examines popular misconceptions about professional work. In the section, "Assignable Curiosity," he demonstrates that professionals—university professors in particular—have much less control over their own research than is generally thought. He describes how the needs of major corporations and government agencies drive university research. In particular, he discusses the profound influence of government grants in determining what researchers choose to study.             Another popular and powerful notion that Schmidt refutes is the belief that more highly educated people tend to be more creative, independent, and liberal. In making this argument he draws an important distinction between being conservative or liberal in one's personal beliefs, which have little social impact, and being conservative or liberal in the beliefs one acts upon at work. The latter, Schmidt contends, have the greatest social impact, and it is in this arena that many seemingly liberal and left- leaning professionals (such as university professors) are surprisingly conservative. Claiming that the academy is an essentially conservative institution, Schmidt cites the Chronicle of Higher Education finding that only 5% of professors identify themselves as "radical" or "left" of the political mainstream. Examining the Examinations             Central to the production of ideologically correct professionals are mechanisms for selecting and excluding candidates for the programs that eventually qualify individuals for professional work. In the chapters, "Ugly Scene at the Narrow Gate," "Examining the Examination," and "Gratuitous Bias," Schmidt provides an in-depth look at the ways professional workers are selected.             The first of the selection mechanisms is the process by which students are chosen for admission to graduate programs and to advanced stages of graduate study. In particular, Schmidt focuses on the standardized tests administered prior to admission to graduate school and the comprehensive faculty-developed tests administered in order to admit graduate students to advanced course work or dissertation candidacy.             He explains that tests, rather than assessing knowledge and creativity, actually measure students' ability to alienate themselves from authentic learning. Students who take the time to reason out problems in a creative way often fail to perform well on timed, standardized tests. These tests tend to privilege rote memory, speed, and close interpretations of text. According to Schmidt, standardized tests serve to screen out students who have "inappropriate" values or inadequate "ideological discipline" (p.170.)             The tests' instructions to pick the "best" answer means that the successful student is the one who either shares the testers' values or senses those valued and adopts them for the examination…. This unconscious ideological discipline that the latter approach represents is the preprofessional's first step toward the more developed ideological discipline that characterizes the professional. (p.170)             Schmidt claims that faculty members typically use comprehensive exams, which are usually not standardized, to "weed out" unsatisfactory students—those who delve too deeply into a particular topic, don't show enough "general knowledge," or answer questions in ways that professors deem unsuitable. Citing the field of physics in particular, Schmidt tells the story of one student who was dedicated to making his comprehensive examination a creative and useful experience. Unlike most students, this student studied books rather than old tests. He studied creative and non-traditional ways to solve traditional physics problems. Rather than being rewarded for his devotion to learning, he failed the exam, was subsequently barred from registering for classes, and was fired from his job as a teaching assistant.             From Schmidt's perspective, students who perform well on standardized tests and comprehensive exams demonstrate that they are willing to "jump through the hoops" of graduate school. These students are willing to spend time and money preparing for standardized tests in order to gain entrance to graduate programs. Once admitted, they are willing to spend hundreds of hours studying for comprehensive exams on which they hope to provide answers that are pleasing to their professors. Schmidt claims that studying for comprehensive exams in graduate school serves as important preparation for other types of marathon efforts later in the professional career. He quotes a tenured professor of Physics, who explained that the important qualities of a physicist are "discipline in work and tenacity to stick to problems" rather than technical knowledge or creativity. Thus, the testing system tends to favor the students who will eventually make the most "manageable employees—students with a subordinate attitude and mainstream values" (p.160). Graduate School: Cult Indoctrination?             One of the most compelling and provocative discussions in the book is the author's examination of the experience of graduate school. In this examination, Schmidt draws parallels between graduate school programs and cult indoctrination. Elaborating the thesis that professional schools serve more to indoctrinate than to teach technical skills, Schmidt details how graduate students are subjected to crushing reading loads, mindless grunt work in labs, and mind-numbing tasks of memorization. In addition, he describes the ways that students' experiences resemble those of individuals being initiated into a cult. Like new cult members, graduate students are often isolated from friends and family, they are placed in the hands of an elite group of "experts," whose judgments they must accept uncritically, and they are asked to devote nearly all their time and energy to "the cause."             Drawing on data from his interviews with graduate students, Schmidt identifies themes common to both the cult and the graduate school experience: Big Promises (recruitment promises and dreams of increased power and independence); Milieu Control (lack of outside social life, long working hours for little or no pay, little or no time for critical examination of the group's ideology); Unquestioned Authority (inability to challenge the opinions and practices of the experts in charge); Guilt Tripping and Shaming (members come to believe they are unworthy, both personally and professionally); Total Personal Exposure (exposure of all details of the member's life to the group); Scientific Dogma (the use of "sacred science" to legitimate the group's core values); Taking Away True Self-Confidence (belief by those in charge that the initiate's self-confidence stands in the way of his or her total commitment to the group); and The Only Path to Salvation (graduate school or the group is the individual's last chance for a better life.)             Schmidt does point out that professional training is not always like cult indoctrination. For example, he describes his own graduate experience as a "great and rewarding time" (p. 219). While acknowledging the positive features of his graduate study, Schmidt notes that many other students in his program "emerged looking and acting like broken versions of their former selves" (p. 219). Resisting Indoctrination             In the final section of the book, Schmidt turns to the question of resistance. He discusses how graduate students, professors, and other professionals can resist the conformity of professional life. In the chapter titled, "How to Survive Professional Training With Your Values Intact," Schmidt draws on an unlikely source—the US Army Manual used to teach potential prisoners of war how to resist indoctrination. He writes, "In graduate school, as in the POW camp, the toughest struggle is not over whether you will survive the process, but over what sort of person you will be when you get out" (p.239).             Key to resisting indoctrination, writes the author, is organizing. The students he interviewed who successfully survived graduate-level professional training did so because they agitated for change, developed social and psychological supports outside of the institution, and spent time with like-minded individuals and groups. According to Schmidt, students who try to resist the system on their own are rarely successful, usually succumbing to pressures to change their own values and practices.             The final chapter, "Now or Never," outlines how professionals in all fields can maintain a sense of integrity and purpose within the mainstream workplace. As Schmidt points out, making a difference and working for social change do not require one to be employed by a non- profit, reform-oriented organization. What they do require, however, is that one take a stance as a "radical professional "(p.265). Such a professional continually critiques the social role of the institution and system for which he or she works. In addition, radical professionals understand and question their place as workers within a conservative system, and they refuse to buy into the mystique of the independent, self-directed professional. To remain a radical professional requires ongoing effort, one that incorporates a variety of strategies, such as dropping the use of elitist titles (e.g., "Doctor" and "Professor"), building coalitions between professionals and non-professionals, and reading non-mainstream and radical journals. Reproduction and Resistance             Schmidt offers a powerful examination of the relationship between professional life, professional schooling, and the perpetuation of social and political hierarchies. Its arguments unmask the subtle conservatism and indoctrination endemic to professional training as well as to professional employment. Ultimately, the book succeeds in laying out a strong case for the radicalization of professionals. Whereas most critical studies of education focus on social reproduction in elementary and secondary schools, Schmidt's analysis examines how these mechanisms play out in graduate education and induction into the professional career.             As with many analyses based on social reproduction theories, Schmidt's examination tends to over-generalize. He does include some examples of student experiences from other fields, but by basing his observations largely on just one field (i.e., his own field of physics), he seems to imply that all graduate education is equally conservative, demanding of personal compromise, and inhospitable to a diversity of views.             The book would also benefit from the inclusion of other voices. I wanted to hear from graduate students in disciplines other than physics, and I was looking for narratives about resistance. In particular, I wanted to hear stories from students who had resisted the system completely and chosen different paths altogether.         These are minor points, however, compared to the central weakness of the book, namely Schmidt's failure to address questions of methodology. Although he uses powerful examples presumably collected from interviews with students, Schmidt never explains how he went about collecting this information. Despite the fact that the book was intended for a mainstream audience, the author still should have provided some discussion of the theoretical framework guiding his work and the methods used to accomplish it.             Another problem is Schmidt's inattention to the actual experiences of practicing professionals—both those who conform and those who resist. While providing examples of how students resist conformity in graduate school, he seems to ignore examples of how currently employed professionals offer resistance. This important oversight leaves the reader with the impression that all professionals are hapless cogs in the machinery of social reproduction. Discussion of the types of resistance undertaken by practicing professionals would have offered support for the recommendations presented at the end of the book.         Finally, Schmidt's analysis would have been improved if it had drawn on relevant theory. For example, he might have used feminist theory to consider the ways marginalized groups in the academy have resisted domination. Work by feminist philosopher, Jane Roland Martin addresses some of these issues quite poignantly. Schmidt would have strengthened his arguments by connecting them to related theoretical interpretations offered by feminists such as Martin or neo-Marxists such as Jean Anyon.             Despite some significant weaknesses, Disciplined Minds still offers a powerful analysis of the impact of professional work on our minds and hearts. Moreover, Schmidt offers concrete suggestions helpful to fellow travelers who feel trapped by "the system." These suggestions enable us to reaffirm and act upon the original commitment we made to use our life's work to promote social good. About the Reviewer Andi O'Conor is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of Educational Studies at Ohio University. She is currently studying the relationship between masculinities, peer group relations, and school violence. Her research interests include critical qualitative studies of gender, queer theory, and radical theories of education.