Learning, Healing, and Change

  An excerpt from the Introduction: The subject of education is ghettoized. People are unaware not only of the substance of what is happening in the schools but of relevance to trends elsewhere in society. For example, we do not talk about how the expectations of the federal educational reforms are right in line with our failing economic model of continuous growth in the face of depleting reserves. In the case of education, it is the test scores which are expected to grow continuously, and it is the teachers' energy and resilience, along with the resilience of children and families, which is being depleted. The narrowing down of things like ownership of news media (and of news coverage, which tends to leave out history and context) is mirrored by a narrowing focus in the educational field. It makes sense that the same government which has succumbed to corporate rule would manage the schools in a way that supported the status quo. Manipulative, incompetent leadership is p...

Lao Tzu said, 'Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.' Kindness is at the heart of so many important things, including true teaching and learning. Love for ourselves, humanity and the world: this is not frosting, whether we're talking self-improvement, Smartening Up our kids, or fixing our broken system. (Unless by "frosting" we mean "the heartiest part of the meal," which is an argument I could probably be made to support :)