Traces the history of moral education from the ethics-laden forties and fifties through the value-neutral sixties and seventies to the late eighties' focus on character, socialization, and culture. Offers a blueprint for future ethical instruction based on example, explanation, exhortation, environment, and experience. (MLH)

All children can learn under conditions that permit and sustain steady attention to instruction and study. Given the necessary optimum conditions, it is likely that even average teaching can penetrate with positive effect simply because the only distraction would be the teachers themselves. (Author/IRT)

In a steady diet of shocking daily news stories, the author saw one item that was particularly shocking. A 5-year-old kindergarten child just "lost it" in her classroom, went a little berserk, threw violent fits, and had to be restrained with handcuffs. Such an incident seems to beg for analysis, and countless columnists offered their insights and…

Intelligence-friendly classrooms require a teaching/learning process governed by extant knowledge and theories about developing human beings' intellectual potential. Guidelines are based on setting a safe emotional climate, creating a rich learning environment, teaching the mind-tools and skills of life, developing learners' skillfulness,…

Neoconservative intellectuals have reopened the genetic inferiority theories, contended that the poor are responsible for their own condition, propounded the idea that governmental and institutional intervention in individual affairs makes no substantial difference, and advocated a pseudo-meritocracy. The best response is a community development…

Some teenagers need to attend schools that do far more, in the way of providing a social-psychological home, than schools do now. These schools must take up where the family has left off. (Author/IRT)

Contends that if open education is to succeed, it is essential to move beyond the traditional curriculum. (Author)

The ability to take a playful outlook is important to creative thought, but too often schools recognize the legitimacy of structured games only, squelching creative play. Schools should cultivate natural playfulness so that children can adapt to our fast-changing world and learn to create new rules. (Author/WD)

Developing a block schedule and surviving its first year of implementation require an open mind, a flexible spirit, and commitment. Discusses the basics of block scheduling; curricular alignment, course development, and unit design; pacing guides for time management; instruction strategies and lesson designs; classroom management; advanced…

In response to Mr. Ayers and Mr. Klonsky, Mr. Duncan argues that Chicago's Renaissance 2010 initiative is holding adults accountable by closing low-performing schools rather than trapping children in a failing educational environment.

As a principal, Ms. Brown has firsthand knowledge of the pressures educational leaders face in the NCLB era. If administrators are going to perform effectively in today's school environment, she argues, the programs that prepare them will have to undergo significant reform. She urges university leadership programs to adopt four changes that will…

This article presents a reply to "Edison Is the Symptom, NCLB Is the Disease" by Peter Campbell--a critique that portrayed the school as an exploitative environment, a veritable plantation subjugating poor minority children through mind-numbing, compliance-inducing drills. The author refutes the specific charges leveled against…

What is needed to judge school effectiveness is a means by which schools can be assessed as "cultures" that create sets of relationships, norms of behaviors, and values and obligations that lead to the development of healthy and productive adults. The Hope Study was originally designed to evaluate whether the educational setting would…

In the institutionalized, archaic schools of today there is no peace and order, nor are students being given love and attention as individuals. The atmosphere in huge school plants is a cross between a factory and a prison, and is massively inhumane. (Author/IRT)

Critiques Arthur Jensen's concept of a "reality principle" in educational research from the March 1984 "Phi Delta Kappan." Emphasizes that objectivity and ideology are complementary, not contradictory, aspects of educators' work. (MD)