Schools to Learn in
Berube, Maurice R.
Schools to Learn in Radical School Reform, edited by Ronald and Beatrice Gross. Simon & Schuster. 350 pp. $7.95. Reviewed by Maurice R. Berube This is an admirable book. If anyone exists in...
...There are as many different prescriptions for the malady as there are contributors to this book...
...FantiH has written more intelligently elsewhere on the need for school decentralization...
...But it shows why something drastic must be done about our schools, and done now...
...In effect, our public school system offers a uniformly dull educational fare...
...However, I suspect this is a personal preference...
...Wilcox plainly is more interested in making the public school an acculturation center in reverse: a black replica of the New England town hall that would become the center of cultural life for the community, imbuing a black poor with a usable past...
...That failure is the common thread of this anthology...
...But the binding theme of such disparate authors as Paul Goodman and Kenneth Clark is their perception of the public school as an obstacle to learning and a shared vision that these schools can be much better places to be...
...If anyone exists in America who is unaware of the trouble with our public schools, I recommend that he read Radical School Reform...
...It is all here, and it makes necessary reading...
...For what the editors have collected in these pages is not only the most impressive testimony of what is wrong with our schools, but some sound solutions as to what can and should be done...
...the radical political criticism of Kenneth Clark and Preston Wilcox...
...the educational analyses of such critics as Paul Goodman and Marshall McLuhan...
...We still know little about the mystery of learning...
...What Wilcox advocates transcends the concept of a community controlling its schools...
...Such radical criticism points up our educational shortcomings...
...As these contributors note, each child is different and learns in different ways and at different paces...
...The editors have skillfully arranged their materials: testimony of sensitive teachers like Jonathan Kozol and John Holt...
...For another, they are inculcating the affluent with counterfeit values...
...What is wrong with our schools...
...The editors present a strong case that our schools are not educating both its populations—the urban black poor and the suburban white middle class...
...For all our claims of diversity in education—the cant usually invoked against Federal control of education—there are precious few alternatives in public schools...
...Reviewed by Maurice R. Berube This is an admirable book...
...The remedy is such sweeping school reform that it would, in effect, transform a public school system into a private one...
...The Preston Wilcox essay is a brilliant exposition on education and blacks...
...The curriculum proposals advanced by Fantini-Wein-stein and Postman-Weingartner are rehashes of the stale ideas of traditionalists...
...theirs is more a dream deferred than a faith lost...
...and finally, the rather hopeful voices of those operating counter-culture experiments such as A. S. Neill and Herbert Kohl...
...One wishes that there was a greater stress on the need for political reform, more public control of schools...
...These are the only soft spots in the collection...
...And beneath the disappointment runs a hopeful current that learning could be made effective...
...But, which parent in America has the option to send his children to a different kind of public school...
...As the editors note, these critics "who were considered wild-eyed romantics when they spoke have in a few short years begun to sound like the most realistic voices in education...
...This concept of a community school contrasts sharply with the fortress school we have in our black urban ghettos...
...Radical School Reform does not settie some great issues...
...In short, this book records how we, the public, and our educators have lost contact with our young...
...For one thing, they are failing the poor...
...All of these radical reformers are idealists who, although soured on public schooling, have not renounced the idea of public education...
...There are some flaws in this collection, but they are few...
...Ronald and Beatrice Gross, two experienced educational hands, succeed in presenting an anthology which "reflects the entire range of radical thought and practice...
Vol. 34 • May 1970 • No. 5
