Dennis Evans, Editor, McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
2005
As the title suggests, this book offers views from both sides of scads of education issues, such as classroom discipline, service learning, school uniforms, sex education, and religion in schools. Many of these twenty topics are of interest to teachers, principals and others who make decisions about how to run classrooms and schools; others have broader policy implications, such as home schooling and common curricula. The forty chapters - one on each side of every issue - come from a variety of sources: articles in Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, and Education Week, and papers by the Heritage Foundation, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, even the Fordham Foundation, to name just a few. The authors are also a varied bunch, from Tom Loveless and Mike Podgursky to Gary Nash and Alfie Kohn. It even includes opposing court decisions from Justices Thomas and Ginsberg, arguing the legality of drug testing in schools. The book's strength is its balance, as it enables the reader to understand the arguments and begin to appraise the tradeoffs on these issues. It's exasperating, though, that in this format even the weakest of arguments must be given equal time; the one page summaries following each point-counterpoint exchange are loath to favor one side over the other - even when both sides aren't making equally compelling arguments. Also, parts of the book are dated (this is the second edition and just two chapters were originally written within the last two years). Still, the topics and selections are generally interesting and it could prove to be a useful resource. (An instructor's manual and other tools are available for those who wish to use it in the classroom). The ISBN is 1550-6916 and you can learn more here.
