Leon Botstein

Leon Botstein is the longtime president of Bard College (at 23 he was the youngest college president in American history), he is the director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and is an iconoclastic educator. In many ways, he is a true Renaissance man.
I guess I should have read this book several years ago – my daughter attends Bard High School Early College – the school Botstein founded and that is based on the ideas in this book. Better late than never I guess because the book was compelling and Botstein is clearly brilliant.
Botstein maintains that high school, or at least the high school curriculum has been reduced to rote learning reinforced by standardized tests. He basically makes a case that, by and large, teens are warehoused until college. He states that this is not only a huge disservice to teens who are eager and wired to learn, and are bored in the current system, but warehousing kids in high school for four years is an unnecessary public expense. Essentially, he advocates abolishing much of high school, taking advantage of the teenage mind and treating that mind with more respect by challenging teens to analyze, explore ideas and to learn how to think critically. In other words, he is advocating for a more substantive education. He argues that teenagers are ready and wired to start thinking critically and that advancing them supports this readiness and motivates them. He argues against those who hold that the American educational system has decayed and that we need to examine and replicate the past. He posits that this is a kind of backward thinking based in nostalgia and not necessarily on past success.
In order to accomplish the abolition of high school and the advancement of younger teens to college level education, Botstein encourages an evolution in both a parental and educator approach to teens. He advocates for a cross between teacher and college professor for kids. He wants kids to be exposed to people trained in subject specialties rather than teaching/education; people who are both passionate about and immersed in particular subject specialties. He also makes the case that in general, teachers need to emulate sports coaches in that there needs to be constant and immediate response to kids in to maximize effectiveness. For parents, Botstein provides twenty-four maxims (one for every hour of the day) by which to live and raise intellectually curious kids.
I was impressed by the book. Botstein is ground breaker and since the writing of this book many early college high schools based on my daughter’s school have opened throughout the country. Though the workload is huge and she has had to sacrifice some out of school interests, my daughter is thriving at the school, loves it and wouldn’t think of being anywhere else.… (mais)