Journey Across the Life Span: Human Development and Health Promotion

by Polan, Daphne Taylor

A. Davis. School of Practical Nursing, Uniondale, NY. Textbook for practical nursing students, covering growth and development across the complete life span. Each chapter outline, objectives, key terms, helpful hints, and a summary. Softcover Human Development--nurses' instruction.

287 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Isa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm quoting these.

Regarding African-Americans:

"“Direct eye contact in this culture can be considered a form of aggression,” the passage reads."

"The rest of the book reads like a travel guide for racist aliens interested in visiting planet Earth. It offers a chapter on Hispanic Americans claiming nurses should avoid eye contact with them, too, since it’s interpreted as giving the “evil eye.”"

"The book inaccurately claims Arab-Americans believe “illness is seen as a punishment for sin, and death is seen as God’s will.”"

[Shawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wonder where the author learned the information in this book. The real tragedy is that this book is used in an educational setting. So it is recommended that an African American should not be addressed with direct eye contact? I keep forgetting in ameriKKKa, we are not people. Lady please stop writing and instead, go and read a few books. Hell, there might even be a few black authors.

[Zee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content was OK, but I didn't like how the objectives never seemed to line up with the content in the chapters--they'd give learning goals like "list 3 psychological developments for this age group" or something, and then they themselves wouldn't list it. My absolute favorite was when there was a learning objective of the sequence of vaccines a newborn gets, and in the chapter it doesn't even bother listing them out, it just says to look in the appendix. That makes no sense to me. I also didn't like the lack of extra resources for the book--there was no online component or any sort of CD with activities that could be used as study aides. So all in all, eh. It wasn't awful but it wasn't a well put together textbook, either.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was assigned to me for my Life Span Development course this semester. It was an easy read, and I learned quite a bit from it. :)