Schooling for Life: Reclaiming the Essence of Learning »

Too many students experience school as a place to put in time . . . and view their lives within school walls as distinctly different from their lives at home and in their community. Too many educators seem to share that point of view and focus more on lists of standards than the students they are supposed to serve. This book is about how we might blur the distinctions between "school life" and "real life," between learning and teaching, between learning well and living well. It's for anyone who has ever asked

• When did we decide test scores were more important than understanding?
• When did we accept the image of teachers as mere implementers of state curricula?
• When did we accept the idea that schools are places where no one has to think too hard?

This book is a rallying cry to our true educational mission. It's an assertion that we can have the schools we really want if we're bold enough to look beyond the myths of what a good school is, and instead, work to facilitate intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic growth in our students and ourselves. Author Jacqueline Grennon Brooks goes inside the classroom to share the experiences of teachers, parents, and students and to present contrasting examples of schooling that honors the complexity of learning and life and schooling that ignores it. It's a journey that will inspire the reexamination of practices and the revitalization of schools.

Library Journal

Brooks (director, Science Education Program, SUNY at Stony Brook) here offers a glimpse of the potential for instruction in our public schools if only we as a society can look beyond testing and state standards. Brooks draws on her own childhood experiences, some entertaining but all illustrative, and her own and her colleagues' classroom teaching experiences to demonstrate that teaching can go beyond meeting state mandates and instill a love of learning. The book contains many practical exercises to stimulate further thought on how such instruction can be adapted to today's classrooms. Like David Thornburg in The New Basics, Brooks advocates bringing real life back into the classroom by presenting students with an actual problem and asking them to solve it, using knowledge and tools across disciplines. Brooks's inspiring book should be required reading for students embarking on a career in education, veteran teachers, and legislators. Recommended for academic and large public libraries and education collections.-Mark Alan Williams, Library of Congress Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.