Product Description
"We shape our tools and then they shape us." With these words, Kenneth Boulding captured one of the great truths of the modern world. In Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips, Gene V Glass analyzes how a few key technological inventions changed culture in America and how public education has changed as a result. Driving these changes are material self-interest and the desire for comfort and security, both of which have transformed American culture into a hyper-consuming, xenophobic society that is systematically degrading public education. Glass shows how the central education policy debates at the start of the 21st century (vouchers, charter schools, tax credits, high-stakes testing, bilingual education) are actually about two underlying issues: how can the costs of public education be cut, and how can the education of the White middle-class be "quasi-privatized" at public expense? Working from the demographic realities of the past thirty years, he projects a challenging and disturbing future for public education in America. Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips is attracting the attention of the nation's foremost education scholars. Reviews: "This is the first credible book of the 21st century to anticipate the future of public education." David C. Berliner ".a wake up call to America about the disastrous consequences of current policies that shortchange the education of the coming majorityLatinos and other 'minority' studentson whom the very future of the nation rests. " Patricia GÃ¡ndara "The book makes such impressive sense that one has to believe that its clarity, command of the facts, eye for absurdity, and concern for justice will garner greater support for public education as a common and noble cause." John Willinsky "This is the most original book about education in years." Ernest R. House

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 8 reviews)

Very Interesting but Flawed

"Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips" is one of the most interesting books I've read on U.S. education in a long time- and I've read several dozen over the past few years. Dr. Glass mentions in the book that he got inspiration from Jared Diamond's excellent Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, which looked at the impact of technology in shaping civilizations throughout human history. Dr. Glass makes the argument that the inventions of artificial fertilizers, contraceptives and life-extending medications, industrial robots, and the personal credit card have led to huge changes in American society during the 20th century. As a result of these demographic changes, Dr. Glass argues that the older, whiter voting public has abandoned its support for government-run schools that educate "other peoples' children".

The book is strongest in Part II, the chapters devoted to tracing the impact of technology in changing U.S. demographics. I found this section to be fascinating and very thought-provoking. If it were possible to rate each portion of the book separately, this part deserves 5 stars.

Where I found Dr. Glass' arguments to be flawed, however, was in his treatment of the state of government-run education. He unconvincingly repeats all the tired old liberal claims about the topic. In his view, the crisis in the schools has been "manufactured" for political reasons in order to destroy government-run schools. He devotes much space in the book to diatribes against standardized testing, charter schools, vouchers and tax credits for private schools, homeschooling, cyberschools, open enrollment and other school choice programs, alternative teacher certification programs like Teach for America, and so on.

Even though the book has a copyright date of 2008, Dr. Glass often uses older studies to support his positions while ignoring more recent studies that would undermine them. For example, he uses a small 1998 study to make the claim that homeschoolers are 94% non-Hispanic whites, 1% blacks, and <1% Hispanics. Why did he ignore the much larger 2003 National Center for Educational Statistics survey that found homeschoolers to be 77% non-Hispanic whites, 9% blacks, and 5% Hispanics? The latter numbers are a lot closer to the overall school-age population, which in 2003 was 61% non-Hispanic whites, 15% blacks, and 17% Hispanics. Yes, blacks and Hispanics are somewhat underrepresented among homeschoolers but it's not even remotely as much as Dr. Glass would have his readers believe. Dr. Glass similarly cherry-picks his data on many other "hot button" educational issues.

Dr. Glass also has a highly annoying tendency to make accusations of racism/xenophobia without providing any objective evidence that it truly is at work. He admits as much in his appendix, where he states that his "personal preference is for psychoanalysis to explain many of the most important aspects of human behavior...I see something akin to the 'defense mechanisms' at work in the intellectualizing of motives of both experts and ordinary people around questions of racial and ethnic segregation in public education. No one likes to be accused of being prejudiced, but most of us are." Conjectures like this do not belong in a scholarly work- just stick to the facts, please!

Overall, I recommend "Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips" despite the weaknesses in the author's discussions of the current state of government-run schools and of alternatives to those schools.
December 01, 2008

Review from "The School Administrator," December 2008

Reviewed by Jim Hattabaugh, superintendent, Mansfield School District, Mansfield, Ark.

A catchy title does not always produce a book that catches your attention from front to back. Gene V Glass accomplishes both, grabbing your immediate attention with the title, Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips, and keeping your attention throughout the entire book.

Glass, a Regents' professor at Arizona State University, does an outstanding job of explaining the education reform movement and debunking what is behind this seemingly unending political football that occupies the daily toils and troubles of administrators, students and parents.

Especially enlightening is the way the author debunks the crisis in education based on a global comparison of student test scores. He explains in detail the fallacies and errors in these comparisons as covered by the mainstream news media. Glass also tackles the politically hot issue of accountability and ethnicity.

Readers familiar with the work of Gerald Bracey, a longtime debunker of unfair criticism of the public schools and the educators who work in them, should add Glass to their list of must reading. This especially easy-to-read book is so expertly set forth that the 311 pages of text and data were completed in two sittings. The up-to-date data he uses to illustrate the central points blend perfectly with the author's historical perspective.
November 30, 2008

A must read

Glass's "Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnet Strips" is a must read for anyone interested in public education and its place within American culture. Glass uncovers how technological advances have shaped our way of life and way of thinking--a way of thinking that may explain why education reform efforts continue to flounder. As an educational policy researcher, I constantly grapple with why it is so difficult for policymakers to understand education. Glass adeptly and meticulously describes how the evolution of business practices, technological advances, and cultural fads have intersected and led to a narrow view of public education. His book has clarified for me why so many people have unrealistic expectations from public schooling.

Glass's writing is accessible, authoritative, and interesting. But, that is just the start. The real punch in this book comes from his creativity and innovation in weaving together the ways in which cultural processes have impacted how we see public education.

if you care about public education at all, you must read this book.
August 28, 2008

Certainly True in Texas

I am a teacher in the Texas public schools, and I can tell you from my own experience that what this book says about Texas is absolutely true.
August 02, 2008

You'll Learn Things You Didn't Know About Schooling

The analyses and projections Glass presents are spot on in my view. That the US will become older and browner is evident from US Census data. But Occam's razor could well be applied to "fertilizers, pills, and magnetic strips." These are metonyms for technologies that have indeed had wide-ranging consequences, but they are very distal determinants of the present status or likely future of US pre-collegiate education.

The sub-title is also problematic. The book deals with the politics and economics of education in the US. Accepting the five projections in Chapter 10 in no way defines the 'fate' of public education in the US. That will be what 'we' make it. Glass' analyses of current belief systems regarding education are scathing. But belief systems can be changed (per George Lakoff's work). And overriding beliefs is Boulding's wisdom: "We make our tools and then they shape us." Combine this with the wisdom of Josiah Royce, emblazoned over the stage at Royce Hall, UCLA, (when I was a student. They remodeled the building and I don't know what's there now): "Education is learning to use the tools humanity (Royce said 'the race' but 'humanity' would be the term used today) has found indispensable" and you have a pretty good two-sentence guide.

Ironically, in the end Glass goes soft-headed, " The only reform [sic] that stands any chance of making our public schools better is the investment on teachers--to aide them in their quest to understand, to learn. Go become more compassionate, caring, and competent persons." (p. 249) That's a fool's errand--well-intentioned, but foolish in the sense that it hasn't had the intended consequences in the past and offers little for the future. If Ray Kurzweil's projections in "Singularity" are even half-right, it's going to be a different future for instruction.

My story of how US schooling got to where it is currently is simpler than Glass' story. As Glass states, prior to the mid-50s the aspiration was to enroll all kids in high school. Prior to that time, schools handled instructional failures by tossing kids out or counseling them out. With "full access," weaknesses started to show.

Historically, all media information regarding schooling was local, focusing on athletics and 'human interest' anecdotes. Even today, only a handful of newspapers cover schooling nationally. That gain is an important consequence of NCLB, but even there the accounts largely swallow whole governmental news releases.

The move that began in 1965 to make schooling a matter of national interest was important. The subsequent history could be titled "Bureaucrats, academics, and publishers." The small number of individuals who constituted the Beltway Consensus bought, and still buy, Jim Coleman's contention (based on shoddy "research") that "families matter more than schooling," "education spending is unrelated to educational achievement," and "school integration across socioeconomic lines (and hence across racial lines) will increase Negro achievement, and they throw serious doubt upon the effectiveness of policies designed to increase non-personal resources in the school." (The self-serving interests Glass exposes are evident.)

By the mid-1980s it was all-too-clear that "school integration" was not getting the job done. "High standards "was the answer, culminating in the "Goals 2000" legislation. Of course 2000 came with none of the goals met. No one recognized that the "standards" were rhetoric masked as "content." The consensus was that "accountability" via standardized achievement tests is the answer. Hence NCLB. (Same self-serving interests.)

What has the academy been doing? Not much. Glass tells that story. What he doesn't explain is why those who understand the flaws in NAEP and all standardized achievement tests have sat with their thumbs in their mouths.

Publishers are culpable in that they provide the tools that define schooling instruction. The publisher line is that they "only respond to market demands." This means they're unaccountable and unregulated. Their 'offerings' are junk, but bureaucrats and academics give them a free ride.

So what to do? Again it's a simple story. Borrow from the corporate world the notion of "business intelligence" and "key performance indicators." Also borrow from the IT sector and several large corporations the notion of structured "certification of capability." This "gets a handle" on schooling and permits real cost-benefit analysis of instructional accomplishments. Further, recognize that schools today provide important societal services (e.g. health screening and nutrition provision) in addition to instruction. Ironically, instruction is the weakest benefit of schooling and the other benefits go unrecognized.

A few final reactions: "Appendix A: Notes on Theory, Research, and Policy" alone is worth the price of the book. If it were read by every student as a freshman, every legislator, and anyone remotely concerned with schooling, the future of education would be a good deal brighter.

The practice of documenting with footnotes on the relevant page as well as references and indexes at the end of the book is welcome and should be standard practice. The use of footnotes is judicious and the occasional accompanying elaboration makes the communication more interactive.

The exposition is a model of 'good writing.' Strunk and White, where ever they are, are no doubt exchanging high-fives. someone followed their advice. I didn't always buy what Glass was saying, but there was never any doubt about the substance of the communication. The communication warrants consideration by anyone in any way concerned with US schooling.

May 12, 2008

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us
by Daniel Koretz

Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools
by Sharon L. Nichols; David C. Berliner

Spin Cycle: How Research Is Used in Policy Debates: The Case of Charter Schools
by Jeffrey R. Henig

The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America's Public Schools
by David C. Berliner, Bruce J. Biddle

The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education
by Clive Belfield, Henry M. Levin