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Neil Postman, an author of 20 books, calls himself “an affectionate critic of American prejudices, tastes and neuroses.” “The End of Education,” an amiable discussion of educational ills and remedies, confirms this self-description. The book pivots around one salient notion, which inspires Postman’s ambiguous title, for he is less interested in “the end” than in “the ends” of education. Studies of the perpetual educational crisis typically focus on means and methods, ignoring the end or the goal. We regularly ask, “How can we increase scores or decrease drop-outs?” leaving out the essential: What is the purpose of education? To use Postman’s language, education must serve a worthy “god” or “gods,” otherwise it becomes meaningless.

Postman’s first and most compelling gambit tackles the deficient “gods” of economic utility and technology. From every quarter we are warned or lectured that an excellent education sustains economic prosperity and competitiveness. Postman skewers this idea as unproved and unconvincing. German and Japanese firms open factories where labor is cheap, not where education is superior. In today’s global economy, Postman asserts, low-skill jobs expand most rapidly.

Moreover the economic “god” cannot motivate students or sustain education. Students are too multidimensional and school too multifaceted to be reduced to employment and salaries. The “god” of technology fares no better with Postman; it distorts education by shifting attention from people to machines, pretending more computers or access to “on-line” data will transform education. Not so. We already are drowning in a sea of information; we lack goals and orientation.

The bulk of “The End of Education,” however, consists not of Postman’s criticisms of inadequate “gods” but of his ideas for better ones. Postman should be saluted for his courage. This New York University professor is no abstract theorist; he jumps into the fray with concrete suggestions on how to revitalize education. These range from very specific ideas--get rid of all textbooks--to general proposals on reorganizing schools or the curriculum. Teachers may find his reflections stimulating; others may be less moved.

He calls his first proposal “spaceship Earth,” an environmental goal that would enlist students “in the care of their own schools, neighborhoods and towns” under the supposition that responsibility for the planet begins locally. Postman means this literally; students would exit the classroom and spend their time planting trees in their neighborhoods or governing their communities; their schooling would take place in the larger environment.

If this seems too impractical, Postman suggests a more conventional approach, reorganizing the major subjects students take in school. Students would study fields directly bearing on planetary health, which Postman believes are archeology, anthropology and astronomy. Archeology, for instance, “is among the best subjects we have for helping to cultivate in the young a sense of earthly perspective. Crew members of the spaceship Earth need to have nontrivial knowledge of crew members of the past.”

Unfortunately Postman loses his sure touch. His language becomes cloying and his ideals slapdash. Why stop with three subjects? As an afterthought, Postman himself suggests that foreign languages and comparative religions would also be indispensable for a “spaceship Earth” curriculum. What about biology and geography? Aren’t they relevant for an environmental approach? In any event, with or without biology and comparative languages, his proposal of “spaceship Earth” does not seem especially groundbreaking. My own fourth grader came home with the news that his class will focus on “the planet Earth” as the year’s topic.

Postman’s other suggestions are neither worse nor better. Under the goal of “the fallen angel,” he proposes that we--teachers, parents, writers and students--admit we all make mistakes. Postman believes this would encourage an atmosphere of skepticism and tolerance stimulating discussion. “At present,” he states, “there is very little tolerance for error in the classroom.” Perhaps, but my sense is that students remain silent less out of fear of criticism than out of a lack of interest. The notion that authoritarianism stifles education would also be news to conservative critics, who find in the classroom a corrosive relativism and endless tolerance.

These conservatives would be heartened to learn that as soon as Postman commends mistake-making, he authoritatively names indispensable materials that should be taught about the great “American experiment.” “If a teacher has not read this material,” Postman advises, listing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Tocqueville, Paine and Dewey, “I would be reluctant to have him or her in close contact with American children.” Under other rubrics, Postman recommends specific books, painters and classical music pieces. No rock concerts should be allowed in schools before students hear Chopin and Beethoven. Certain books must be read. “I would say there is no excuse . . . for students to have graduated from high school without having read, for example, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Dickens, Whitman, Twain, Melville or Poe.” Postman, who thinks of himself as a radical, often sounds like a conservative.

The problem is not his politics; the problem is that his new goals to revive schooling lack ballast. They do not seem terribly new or sufficiently grounded in history and reality. For instance, while Postman proposes to send students into the larger community, he says nothing of earlier theories like those of Paul Goodman in “Compulsory Mis-education” or Ivan Illich in “De-Schooling Society” that advocated similar projects. What became of those ideas or efforts? Postman does not even allude to them.

Nor do disintegrating school systems intrude. While Postman cooks up schemes, the cafeteria is closing, if not collapsing. Like most urban systems, schools in Postman’s backyard face draconian cuts. “I never envisioned myself being an undertaker,” stated a New York City superintendent, who chopped two class periods from the day to save money, “but I feel like I am looking at the death of the system” of public education. Postman need not explain this grim situation, but he should address the relationship of his proposals to this reality. Does he think his “spaceship Earth” will appeal to inner-city kids who already spend too many hours outside of school? While he suggests, for instance, that students study museums as human institutions, shouldn’t he consider how this will be done without the funds or staffing for schools or museums?

His proposals are not made more convincing by his casualness with information and facts. Arthur Koestler never wrote a book called “The God That Failed,” though he contributed an essay to a volume with that name; Marx did not ask Darwin to write the introduction to “Capital.” Nor does he overload his book with footnotes or findings. He prefers the “studies have shown” approach, with little indication as to what studies. Postman does break new ground with footnotes; he gives no dates and little information. At a crucial argument on the lack of relationship between schooling and economic prosperity, he simply footnotes “the work of Henry Levin of Stanford University.”

“The End of Education” is a salutary but less than penetrating contribution to the debate on education. Surely Postman is right about the fetish of means and the limited discussion of educational ends. “The End of Education,” however, falls short of its own end, failing to giving us the goals it forcefully argues we need.