Stout, Maureen

views updated

STOUT, Maureen

PERSONAL: Born in British Columbia, Canada. Education: University of British Columbia, B.A. (English), 1985; London School of Economics, postgraduate diploma, in international and compariative politics, 1986; University of London, M.A. (European language and literature), 1987; University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D. (education), 1994.

ADDRESSES: Home—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Offıce—Imaginative Education Research Group, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Dr., Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada. E-mail—drmaureenstout@telus.net.

CAREER: California State University, Northridge, assistant professor of education, c. 1994-2000; Imaginative Education Research Group, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, post-doctoral fellow; has also taught at University of British Columbia and University of Victoria.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, American Educational Research Association, Philosophy of Education Society, Comparative and International Education Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada fellowship.

WRITINGS:

The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem, Perseus Books (Cambridge, MA), 1999.

Contributor to books, including Parent School: Simple Lessons from the Leading Experts on Being a Mom and Dad, edited by Jerry and Lorin Biederman, M. Evans, 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Guide book for parents to help their children become successful learners.

SIDELIGHTS: Educational theorist Maureen Stout's first book, The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem, is a "passionately argued and fluidly written attack on contemporary education philosophy and practice," Jack Forman explained in Library Journal. As the title suggests, in The Feel-Good Curriculum Stout shows how the modern emphasis on instilling self-esteem in schoolchildren has led to evolving methods of instruction, like cooperative learning, whole-language reading, discovery math, and creative spelling, that do little to instruct children in the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Praising her book, a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that The Feel-Good Curriculum "couldn't be more timely."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Stout, Maureen, The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem, Perseus Books (Cambridge, MA), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Alberta Report, May 8, 2000, Nathan Greenfield, review of The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem, p. 57.

Choice, July-August, 2000, J. A. Beckwith, review of The Feel-Good Curriculum, p. 2028.

Library Journal, February 1, 2000, Jack Forman, review of The Feel-Good Curriculum, p. 98.

Publishers Weekly, January 10, 2000, review of The Feel-Good Curriculum, p. 52.

Report Newsmagazine (British Columbia, Canada), May 8, 2000, review of The Feel-Good Curriculum.