"John Taylor Gatto's radical treatise on public education, a New Society Publishers bestseller for 25 years, continues to advocate for the unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in an ever-more-rapidly changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it's poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years."--

Drawing on his well-received convocation address at Syracuse University, one of today's most influential and original writers shows how to lead a kinder, more fulfilling life.

"Do you shape the world or does the world shape you? Is freedom something we are born with or something we must work to attain? Offering a torrent of mind-expanding ideas and information THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH is going to make you think again about what it means to be free. Drawing on the best minds in philosophy, history, psychology, physics and economics, it employs decades of evidence to interrogate what we are, where we are and where we want to...

John Sexton argues that over six decades, a "secular dogmatism," impenetrable by dialogue or reason, has come to dominate political discourse in America. Political positions, elevated to the status of doctrinal truths, now simply are "revealed." Our leaders and our citizens suffer from an allergy to nuance and complexity; and the enterprise of thought is in danger. Sexton sees our universities, the engines of knowledge and stewards of thought, as...

John Dewey's Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education seeks to both critique and further the educational philosophies espoused by both Rousseau and Plato. Dewey found that Rousseau's ideas overemphasized the individual, whereas Plato's did the same with the society that the individual lived in. Dewey felt this distinction to be a false one, seeing the formation of our minds as a communal process, like Vygotsky

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Hirsch shows why American students perform less well than students in other industrialized countries. Drawing on classroom observation, the history of ideas, and current scientific understanding of the patterns of intellectual growth, he builds the case that our schools have indeed made progress in teaching the mechanics of reading, but do not convey the more complex and essential content needed for reading comprehension. Hirsch reasons that literacy...

Love tests faith. Faith tests love. Interfaith marriage - how does that work? What about the in-laws? How to raise the kids? For 30 years, Catholics and Jews in Chicago have found that the answers don't have to be so hard - boundaries can be crossed - divisions healed. And the kids? We follow five who grew up learning both Judaism and Catholicism from 8th grade through high school, college and beyond. Their families imagined possibilities - and discovered...

This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.