BRIETMarketplace

There once was a time when teachers and communities were able to exercise democratic control over their schools. Now that power has been taken away, both centralised and privatised, under the guise of “reform.” There is a forgotten history of the time before reform, and within it a bright horizon is visible, reachable only if educators and society at large can learn the lessons of the past. Robb Johnson entered the classroom as a new teacher in the 1980s and has spent a lifetime alongside his pupils encouraging both creativity and a healthy distrust of authority. This book is both memoir and polemic, a celebration of children’s innate desire to learn, share, cooperate, and play, as well as a critique of bureaucratic interference. Johnson details how we ended up with the contemporary mass education systems and why they continually fail to give children what they need.