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2284: World Society, Iaian Vernier's Memoir is a fascinating study
of mankind. Written as a work of fiction, it looks at the human
condition 200 years in the future. Predicting the outcome of
today's social policies, 2284 is a cultural anthropology study that
adds to Itzkoff's extensive writing on the topic. Iaian Vernier
writes in 2284 of the revolutionary internationalism that has been
established in Nairobi, Africa. He chronicles the disasters that
almost destroyed the twenty-first-century world. He describes in
anecdote and philosophical depth the new scientific and secular
world that has been established to bring peace, equality, ethnic
diversity and democracy to humanity, while scrutinizing the plans
for demographic stability that will sustain humanity into the
future. In the twenty-third century, the forbidden rationality of
the scientific minds of the twenty-first century have been
unleashed.
Judaism's Promise, Meeting The Challenge Of Modernity follows
Seymour W. Itzkoff's well-received three-book series, Who Are the
Jews? Judaism's Promise, confronts the many revolutions that have
reshaped Judaism over the centuries allowing it and its people a
path of leadership into the modern world. It takes the writings of
the Torah, Holy Scriptures, and Talmud seriously as exemplars of
the human search for civilizational and moral intellectuality. The
book's basic concern is with the withering of Judaism as a force in
contemporary Western civilization. Sadly millions of Jews have left
the faith. Others venture forth only hesitantly into a synagogue,
now a bastion of fossilized ritual and conspicuous consumption.
These millions needed more from the orthodoxy, and this book
attempts to show them the way back by giving renewed life to the
heritages of Judaism, and, consequently, to its meaning for the
modern world. Judaism's Promise argues for a return to the
synagogue's originating Hellenistic commitment "to come together"
in intellectual and moral study. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan argued,
Judaism must once more become in the 20-21st century the
civilization that it once represented to the wider world, and not a
fossilized ceremonialism.
. . . Mr. Itzkoff places most of the blame for America's alleged
intellectual decline on what he sees as an economically and
intellectually elite cast of misguided liberals. They have isolated
themselves from American society, he says, by their paternalistic
treatment of the underclass, by discounting the importance of
traditional family values and by failing to raise enough bright
children to sustain national competence. The New York Times Book
Review Few doubt that the United States has slipped from its
longstanding eminence as the world's wealthiest and most productive
nation. The problem for the past 30 years has been the diagnosis of
both the decline and then the cure. Literally trillions of dollars
have been expended in futile programs to stanch the hemorrhaging of
our economic wealth, jobs, educational achievement, and cultural
elan. Itzkoff argues that we will never stop the fall until we
understand our real national dilemma. This is the decline in our
national intelligence profile: fewer citizens of high intelligence,
educational potential, and economic productivity. These ideas are
taboo. Itzkoff, however, insists that these are the facts, and they
must be examined. In this book, he lays out the available evidence
for our social disintegration and suggests a rational program of
policy initiatives that would begin to restore us to what we were
as recently as 1955--the great hope of the world.
This is a unique book for parents, educators, and policymakers. It
is alone in setting forth a clear presentation of the learning
stages through which children must pass in order to become fluent,
independently literate readers and writers. It explains the
developmental dangers unique to each child that parents and
teachers may have to confront, as well as the educational
confusions and pathways to success that may determine the
educational fate of each child. It illustrates the learning process
clearly and nontechnically, and does not hesitate to point to the
educational errors as well as successes in the teaching of children
to read. It will be controversial because of its clarity and
scientific accuracy. This volume brings together the sciences of
psycholinguistics and developmental psychology with the practical
knowledge of classroom practice in literacy education to create a
unique, but accessible explanation of how children learn to read.
It explains the necessary educational and pedagogical steps that
parents and teachers both can take in assisting the child to make a
smooth transition from infant babbler to eight-year-old fluent
reader. It also points to the possible developmental as well as
educational danger signals that tell us when things are not going
as they should and suggests what we can do to overcome the
problems, slowdowns, and seeming failures to learn to read and
write. This volume discusses such important issues as emergent
literacy or reading readiness; phonics and slow reading; fluent
reading and the reading system; the dangers of the first-grade
Rubicon; reading problems of unique children; the dangers and
benefits of Whole Language reading rograms; Reading Recovery for
endangered young readers; the role of writing; parents, TV, and the
school program. The book is clearly written, uses nontechnical
terminology, and should provide teachers and parents a guide to
evaluating the progress of youngsters from the time they approach
child-care and pre-school stages of socialization to that point
where they should be reading independently for pleasure as well as
searching for information and subject-matter competency.
Seymour W. Itzkoff is one of the world's leading intelligence
researchers. His exciting new book Our Unfinished Biological
Revolution offers a bold and highly original new study on the
evolution of human intelligence from the origin of life to our
times. With the help of evolutionary theory, Itzkoff explains the
nature of human intelligence as we know it today. Most importantly,
it demonstrates that evolution led to the rise of what intelligence
researchers call the general intelligence factor: the human ability
to plan ahead and solve problems for which natural selection did
not prepare us. The book also argues that humans vary in
intelligence (as with all traits shaped by Darwinian evolution),
and hence in their propensity to think abstractly and anticipate
long-term consequences of their actions. Our Unfinished Biological
Revolution explores the social implications of these two factors as
they unfold in modern technological societies, in which
intelligence plays an increasingly important role. Finally, the
book argues that human intelligence may offer our best hope in
solving the daunting problems of the present era?including
population growth, the exhaustion of natural resources, and the
rise of simplistic and devastating ideologies.
Why does poverty exist? Why is there social pathology and human
degradation? Is it always because of oppression and discrimination?
No, says Professor Seymour Itzkoff of Smith College. The real
reason is the tragedy of low human intelligence, and the consequent
inability of humans to compete in highly complex and dynamic
economic and social environments. "The Road to Equality: Evolution
and Social Reality," contains Itzkoff's highly controversial
analysis of the failures of the welfare approach to helping the
poor. It also contains his radical solution to the perennial
problems of inequality in nations and the consequent turmoil and
revolution. Equalize the intelligence of your nation, Itzkoff
argues, and you will soon eliminate the tragic social and economic
differences between large portions of the population. It is high
intelligence in groups of humans that create civilization and
prosperity in the first place. Merely placing individuals of lower
intelligence in such environments has not ensured their success.
And it never will, predicts the professor, because it violates the
facts of our evolutionary and sociobiological nature.
The 21st century will change the relationship of nations to each
other in the most radical manner that history has ever seen. The
requirements of technological competency have put a premium on high
educable intelligence. Even today we see that nations of uniformly
high intelligence of various racial and ethnic heritage are pulling
away from those with lower national intellectual profiles. Itzkoff
writes that many of the social pathologies in nations such as the
United States, as well as their relative economic decline can be so
attributed. The future of human equality, he concludes, must lie in
an international resolve to face up to the most basic challenge to
world peace, the variability of intelligence in the human
species.
Civilization, Beyond Our Fall explores the realities behind the
rise and fall of historic civilizational ideals, especially on the
fate of the Western vision. The book begins with the rise,
durability, and fall of the historic civilizational profiles of
humankind. It continues with the decline of the West, which from
our perspective began with World War I and has continued at a
faster pace in the 21st century. Itzkoff's prognosis for the next
century or two is one of a dismal world of chaos, war, and deep
pessimism throughout the world. The book concludes with a
prediction of a world of scientific rationalism that will discard
the ideologies, irrationalism, and selfishness that now
characterize our elites. Here we leave dystopian realities for the
perennial human hope of reason and for highly creative communities.
For this second edition, Seymour has written a new introduction and
has added a new retrospective essay. Ernst Cassirer: Scientific
Knowledge and the Concept of Man by Seymour W. Itzkoff is currently
one of the few books available in the English language that
discusses the philosophy of twentieth-century German philosopher
Ernst Cassirer. Itzkoff's study brings Cassirer's perspective
directly into the contemporary debate over the evolution of human
thought and its relationship to animal life. Further, Itzkoff
places Cassirer directly in the context of recent philosophical
thought, arguing for the importance of his Kantian perspective, a
significance that is amply vindicated by the current interest in
Cassirer's ideas.
. . . Mr. Itzkoff places most of the blame for America's alleged
intellectual decline on what he sees as an economically and
intellectually elite cast of misguided liberals. They have isolated
themselves from American society, he says, by their paternalistic
treatment of the underclass, by discounting the importance of
traditional family values and by failing to raise enough bright
children to sustain national competence. The New York Times Book
Review Few doubt that the United States has slipped from its
longstanding eminence as the world's wealthiest and most productive
nation. The problem for the past 30 years has been the diagnosis of
both the decline and then the cure. Literally trillions of dollars
have been expended in futile programs to stanch the hemorrhaging of
our economic wealth, jobs, educational achievement, and cultural
elan. Itzkoff argues that we will never stop the fall until we
understand our real national dilemma. This is the decline in our
national intelligence profile: fewer citizens of high intelligence,
educational potential, and economic productivity. These ideas are
taboo. Itzkoff, however, insists that these are the facts, and they
must be examined. In this book, he lays out the available evidence
for our social disintegration and suggests a rational program of
policy initiatives that would begin to restore us to what we were
as recently as 1955--the great hope of the world.
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