The late Theodore Sizer's vision for a truly democratic public high school systemOur current high schools are ill-designed and inefficient. We have inherited a program of studies that in its overall structure has not changed in over a century. The question is What's next? Theodore Sizer, the founder of The Coalition of Essential Schools, was a passionate advocate for the American school system. In this, his last book, he offers a vision of what a future se...

In this important manifesto, famed education reformer Ted Sizer examines 15 key issues with our current High School system, and shows what can be done to address each. Issue One: The Problem Issue Two: Growing Up AmericanIssue Three: Learning Issue Four: DifferencesIssue Five: The Language of SchoolingIssue Six: TimeIssue Seven: Space and CostsIssue Eight: CoursesIssue Nine: TechnologyIssue Ten: PedagogyIssue Eleven: TestingIssue Twelve: ChoiceIssue Thirteen: FaithIssue Fourteen: MoralityI...

In the spirit of the mega-selling On Bullshit, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary.What does it mean for someone to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often personally stuck dealing with people for whom there is no better name. Try as we might to avoid them, assholes are found everywhere—at work, at home, on the road, and in the publ...

Expose the hidden mechanisms that turn curious children into compliant workers. John Taylor Gatto's explosive follow-up to Dumbing Us Down reveals the specific techniques schools use to destroy imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as rote memorization rather than creative discovery.The Weaponization of Education:This isn't conspiracy theory - it's documented history. Gatto traces how compul...

A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People).As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically ...

This shocking, surprisingly entertaining romp into the intellectual nether regions of today's underthirty set reveals the disturbing and, ultimately, incontrovertible truth: cyberculture is turning us into a society of know-nothings.The Dumbest Generation is a dire report on the intellectual life of young adults and a timely warning of its impact on American democracy and culture.For decades, concern has been brewing about the dumbed-down p...

How many times have you had the unsettling experience of being treated as a troublemaker as soon as you question or raise an objection to a school policy, a textbook, a course of study, a new county regulation, or a community proposal?Every day, attendees of conferences, community forums, PTA meetings, and board meetings are made to feel uncomfortable and occasionally foolish by the person or persons leading the meeting. The speakers, moderators, or provocateurs-whom author B. K. E...

A Clarion Call to Save America's Future by Empowering the Next GenerationIn The Vanishing American Adult, Senator Ben Sasse warns of an existential threat facing America. A generation of young people, raised by overprotective parents and coddled by misguided government programs, is ill-equipped to survive in today's highly-competitive global economy.Core coming-of-age experiences like learning the value of work, leaving home to start a family, and ...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERCNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition.**The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, "I promise ...

This insightful and brilliant analysis of ethics teaches readers valuable skills in evaluating tough choices and arriving at sound conclusions.“A thought-provoking guide to enlightened and progressive personal behavior.”—Jimmy CarterAn essential guide to ethical action updated for our challenging times, How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth M. Kidder offers practical tools for ethical decision-making in the difficult moral dilemmas we face in our e...

"Powerful and disturbing. No one who cares about the future of our public life can afford to ignore this book."—Jackson LearsA powerful sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a vivid portrait of an overproducing global economy that targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. To explain how and why this has come about, Barber br...

Renowned psychologists describe the five most useful insights from social psychology that will help make you “wise”: wise about why we behave the way we do, and wise about how to use that knowledge to understand others and change ourselves for the better.When faced with a challenge, we often turn to those we trust for words of wisdom. Friends, relatives, and colleagues: someone with the best advice about how to boost sales, the most useful insights into raising chi...