Herbert Kohl, one of America's most influential and provocative educators, believes that the only way to persist and to grow as a teacher is to commit oneself to the development of the child rather than to the regimented training of the pupil. His book is a lively, personal testament of one teacher's efforts to cultivate the natural vitality of the learning process; it is also a wondefully concrete and practical guide full of stories of individual students and how they were helped to grow through learning.

He was the first critic of American educational practices to champion the British primary system as a model of reform. This book contains all of Featherstone's ideas on sound educational procedures and the "open-classroom concept" and takes a profound look at our current educational crisis. First he examines the English primary schools, carefully analyzing their informal approach which, he finds, has enabled ordinary teachers working with many different kinds of children to achieve impressive results. He then describes the varieties of sound educational practice schools that are organized learning environments for children finding common threads of freedom, a new conception of the teacher's role, and an implicit understanding that a full childhood is the best preparation for life."