The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux Audible Audiobook – Unabridged Cathy N. Davidson (Author), Carolyn Cook (Narrator), Hachette Audio (Publisher) (Hachette Audio)

The author of this book has studied the history of education in the United States and the discussion often reflects this knowledge, providing perspective that is missed when we are limited only to our own memories (even if you're old like me). For example, it's great fun to learn that slide rules were once regarded as evil intrusions on manual computation. And the fact that we fixed things once (in the late 19th century) is always helpful in the belief that we can do it again. The book tells a number of compelling stories of people at every level, from community college to selective Ivy League institutions, trying to change what they do. However, it is curious that, while Prof. Davidson relates her own experience with making a MOOC (massive open online course) into a huge interactive world that benefited both the students present and those online, she then spends the rest of the book dissing all online interaction as irrelevant. And while she provides many examples of change, she does very little synthesis of where we are, where we need to go, and how to get there.

Finally, speaking as an engineer and scientist for many years, she doesn't address a very important conundrum we need to figure out: how do you convey the indispensable knowledge of Nature's choices without the artificial structure of required subjects and teachers teaching them? Humanities (which are invaluable) are in some respects qualitatively different from the sciences. The same methods may not work in both worlds.

That said, a very useful start to thinking about what education needs to become to survive the century.