As an educator and journalist who has been closely observing schools for more than three decades, Joseph Featherstone is a powerful voice in the struggle for better schooling in our nation. This much-needed and beautifully written collection is testifies to the importance of respecting children’s minds, educating all children, the craft of teaching, and democratic values.

This eminently readable and timely volume features:

• Some of Featherstone’s best-known articles from The New Republic and his celebrated letter to “Josie,” a young woman entering teaching today.
• Ideas that link classroom practice to a social and historical perspective–a one-volume educational foundations course.
• Portraits of outstanding K–12 teachers and detailed descriptions of their classroom practices.
• Issues beyond the classroom, such as changing definitions of childhood and essential connections between school reform and broader political change.
• A critique of the direction of contemporary educational policy.

Essays included in this collection:

On Childhood

• My Good War
• Rousseau and Modernity
• Family Matters
• An American Education
• Five Big Ideas

On School and Society

• Ocean Hill Is Alive, and, Well…
• The Problem is More Than Schools
• Busing the Powerless
• John Dewey Reconsidered
• Democratic Vistas
• Democracy and Education

On Teachers and Classrooms

• The Primary School Revolution in Britain: Schools for Children—What’s Happening in British Classrooms
• Teaching Children to Think
• Experiments in Learning
• Ghetto Classroom
• Teaching Teacher: A Utopian Bulletin
• The Real Thing in Teaching
• To Touch More Life
• The Living Classroom
• Introduction to Vivian Paley
• Letter to a Young Teacher