The Saber-Tooth Curriculum, Classic Edition

Do you like books where you don't know what's going to happen next? If you do this is for you. The kids Jack and Annie are trying to save Morgen. The kids nearly freeze. They found cave men coats and use them. Will they get eaten up by a saber-tooth? Thios is the best book ever if you read it. If you like adventure then this is for you. This is recommended for 2nd through 5th grade. by Josh

I doubt THE SABER-TOOTH CURRICULUM would be produced today, a sad commentary on our times. No contemporary publisher would distribute the first edition to educators for the sake of discourse and no doubt a little shrewd marketing like McGraw did in the late 1930s, and no pointed but whimsical and very funny satire on pedagogical history in the age of theory rendered in opaque language would get very far. What is a better commentary on our times is that this wonderful book is still in print and still venerated despite the trouble it would have in getting born now. A thumbnail sketch: a man, Raymond Wayne, the putative author (actually, the real author is Harold Raymond Wayne Benjamin, who died in 1969 and is still admired as an educational thinker), is in a bar in Tijuana, knocking back tequila daisies when he runs into his old professor, J. Abner Peddiwell, Ph.d., who, with considerable help from the daisies, agrees to embark on a seminar illustrating the history and issues of pedagogy. His witty example is told through the story of the cave man who first decided that children needed to learn the essentials of fish-grabbing, little horse clubbing and tiger-scaring. Out of this grows a complex system that includes teacher accreditation, higher education, Ph.D. programs, progressive theory, conservative theory, teacher unions, the rise of phys ed. and the question that never goes away, do we teach children how to think or what to think? It is enlightening to read how fresh the issues are nearly 70 years later. One only wonders what hay Benjamin would make with the likes of today's educational soup of politics, law, economics and the headlining controversies that plague the profession.

Don't let the 1959 date fool you. Or the reference to curriculum. We have yet to learn and employ the lessons this book provides in education, in the military, in the analysis of clinical trials, and in socal policy. (Aren't we about to build a multi-trillion dollar missile system to keep out knife-wielding terrorists?)

Paleolithic education will still be fashionable in the 21st century if educators of today are not going to do some reflections.

This book is in the form of a narrative dialogue between a professor and a former student in a Tijuana bar over the course of a few days. This bar in Tijuanna is the last place the former student (now a failing salesman) expected to find the straight-laced processor slamming tequilla shots and lecturing on the "History of Paleothic Education". The professor's lectures explore the reasons why the education system, generally, and academia, specifically, have failed to innovate and evolve, by spinning an allegorical tale of the history of the educational curriculum in a paleolithic tribe. Funny, witty, entertaining, and a very fast read (I read it in around 3 hours), this book is a must read not only for those in academia, but for anyone that had, or has, to do dogmatic, antiquated, and non-sensical tasks in their school and/or workplace. A true gem