Dr. McGrane's book is beyond words of description. I just took his very last class ever at UC Irvine, and it was life altering. Read the book, participate in the exploriments, and open your mind. His words will make you think like you never have before.

This book is like no other you will ever read. I highly reccomend it as long as it is under parental supervision. Great book, the man is a genious.

A wonderful and startling book. If you actively engage yourself in Dr. McGrane's work, you will not only come away having learned something about yourself, but possibly even have a new understanding of what learning IS. Professor Mcgrane is the ideal teacher, and it comes through in this book. He teaches by allowing space for students to discover "ways of seeing" for themselves. This book does not merely increase our store of knowledge, but actively reconfigures the way that our knowledge is percieved

Simply put, this is the single most devastating, incredible, challenging, revolutionary, terrifying, haunting, beautiful, and rewarding book i've read (... again and again and again). It's repeatedly forced me to reassess everything i've thought i've "known," and deepened my analysis of both knowledge itself and knowledge's nature. At the same time, it's made me a little crazy and robbed me of the great faith i once had in academics (in other words, if you're working on a degree, you may want to read this *after* graduation). The fact that it's out of print prompts me to seriously question the nature of the publishing industry as well, actually - it seems truly a crime against the progress of learning that more people don't get to read this extraordinary work.

I am a returning college student and had to purchase and read this book as a requiremnet for a class. What I found is that Inge Bell is just pushing her personal buddist/socialist ideas onto young students who are just starting to experience the feelings of freedom that comes with becoming an adult. It's amazing to me that someone who made their career in academia has only everything negative to say about it. Grades are an important benchmark to help you gauge your progress of learning and if you don't get good grades it is usually from to much partying and not enough self discipline (not what most college students want to hear). But that's OK with her, she just blames all of societies problems on these institutions of higher learning and their professors.
I think this book does a disservice to students and if you must read it to try and balance this onesided view, which you'll have to do on your own because most instructors who require this book for their class won't dare provide any others views that will contradict the one presented in this book!

This is a great book. It makes a great high school graduation gift for any kid about to go off to college. I wish I'd been able to read it before I began my undergraduate education. It points out a lot of pitfalls and potential problems that most recent high school grads are totally oblivious to in addition to reminding people there's more to living than trying to make the dean's list every semester. You need friends, you need a real life, you need to be comfortable with who you are.

Reading this book for the first time (I have read it many times since) I was most impacted by the chapter on grades. Bell hits the nail on the head: the entire system of grading, whether necessary for ranking students or not, does influence the way students perceive themselves. True learning happens when one is free from the quest for an A...when one is learning for the learning's sake.

This book is an excellent emotional and psychological lifesaver for any high school, college, or grad student. I love this book!