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Title: A travesty
Review: Johanna Havers perspective in applied linguistics is akin to the "Intelligent Design" view of biology. Just about everything Ms Havers writes about language acquistion and schooling flies in the face of all that has been learned in linguistics in the last thirty years. It is no exaggeration to say that almost all of the leading linguists Havers cites in support of her core ideas of language acquistion would have no hesitation in distancing themselves from her views. Her book is the triumph of anecdote over research; it's Skinner's last hurrah, and must be great comfort to all those who find language acquisition much too tiresomely complicated to take seriously. It's also, incidentally, a book that the present White House administration would happily endorse.
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