CONTENTS




Preface ix
Introduction: Why School? 1


1. In Search of a Fresh Language
of Schooling 25


2. Finding Our Way: The Experience
of Education 31


3. No Child Left Behind and the Spirit
of Democratic Education 43


4. Business Goes to School 53


5. Politics and Knowledge 65


6. Reflections on Intelligence in the
Workplace and the Schoolhouse 73


7. On Values, Work, and Opportunity 89


8. Standards, Teaching, Learning 97


9. Remediation at the University 117


10. Re-mediating Remediation 127


11. Soldiers in the Classroom 139


12. A Language of Hope 145


13. Finding the Public Good Through the
Details of Classroom Life 153




Conclusion: The Journey Back and Forward 161


Acknowledgments 171


Notes 173

Mike Rose, a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, is the author of numerous books, including The Mind at Work, Possible Lives, and Back to School (The New Press). Among his many awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Grawemeyer Award in Education, and the Commonwealth Club of California Award for Literary Excellence in Nonfiction. He lives in Santa Monica.

"Why School?" is a little book driven by big questions. What does it mean to be educated? What is intelligence? How should we think about intelligence, education, and opportunity in an open society? Drawing on forty years of teaching and research and "a profound understanding of the opportunities, both intellectual and economic, that come from education" (Booklist), award-winning author Mike Rose reflects on these and other questions related to public schooling in America. He answers them in beautifully written chapters that are both rich in detail and informed by an extensive knowledge of history, the psychology of learning, and the politics of education.
This paperback edition includes three new chapters showing how cognitive science actually narrows our understanding of learning, how to increase college graduation rates, and how to value the teaching of basic skills. An updated introduction by Rose, who has been hailed as "a superb writer and an even better storyteller" (TLN Teachers Network), reflects on recent developments in school reform. Lauded as "a beautifully written work of literary nonfiction" ("The Christian Science Monitor") and called "stunning" by the "New Educator Journal," "Why School?" offers an eloquent call for a bountiful democratic vision of the purpose of schooling.