The ABC's of Education

Book excerpt: This resource looks at 26 ways schools can better serve the "imaginative, intellectual, and humanitarian promise" of our children. Drawing from his thirty years of teaching at the San Francisco School, as well as memories of his own schooling as a child, Doug Goodkin offers this collection of alphabetic essays on what SHOULD be included in every child's education. In writing which never loses sight of what is truly possible, Goodkin asks the reader to examine practices which are commonly taken for granted in schools today, and compels us to think beyond our passive acceptance. Using stories, reflections, and quotations from students and teachers, and drawing on the writing of historians, artists, poets and philosophers, Goodkin has crafted a small book of essays with large ideas which manages to be both thought-provoking and entertaining as it seeks to inspire us