The DISCIPLINE OF HOPE: LEARNING FROM A LIFETIME OF TEACHING [Hardcover]

Herbert Kohl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 1998

It has been thirty years since Herbert Kohl taught the sixth-grade Harlem class he wrote about in his classic 36 Children. He has been teaching ever since, in kindergarten through graduate school, as he has pursued his lifelong work with children, adolescents, college-age students, and education professionals. In The Discipline of Hope, Kohl examines teaching as a vocation and as a skill, and examines his own love affair with it. He provides insight into how learning takes place in the widest range of circumstances, both in and out of a formal school setting. He demonstrates how schools and other centers of learning can be transformed so that they become places that nurture children while instilling discipline and how they can help students meet high academic standards, develop a sense of respect for themselves and others, and grow into successful adults.

The Discipline of Hope is grounded in the relationship between teacher and student; it dwells on the mutuality between the two as they teach each other. Kohl illustrates the knowledge, wisdom, techniques, and ideas that he has gathered from a lifetime of teaching by describing his real experiences in the classrooms and the schools he has worked in. These have ranged from an urban elementary school and an integrated public school kindergarten, to an experimental high school, to one-on-one reading tutorials; from a city storefront learning center to a rural education center and a college classroom. What emerges from Kohl's concrete description is a picture of how the process of education can be done well; how children, even in the most unlikely circumstances with the most difficult lives, can learn, and how they can themselves develop an active concern for justice and equity.

Central to this book and at the core of the act of teaching as Kohl describes it is what he calls "the discipline of hope" -- the stubborn refusal to accept limits on what students can learn or what teachers can do by helping them discover the power of their minds. At a time when so many are complacent or skeptical about the possibilities of education, this book, with the experiences it describes, of teacher and taught, is an affirmation that provides guideposts, insight, and wisdom.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is a sort of Man's Search for Meaning for educators. Why teach when America's educational system is in shambles and the students would rather scribble graffiti than learn how to write persuasive essays? Kohl, author of more than 40 books (including the classic chronicle of inner-city schools, 36 Children), offers provocative reasons in this retrospective of his decades as an innovative teacher of all grades, from kindergarten to college-level.

Kohl doesn't sugarcoat his career; he acknowledges his missteps. But he focuses on the core of his teaching style: he triumphantly looks to his students for inspiration. Kohl also forms his curriculums with his students, not for them: he included street theater and poetry writing in an alternative storefront classroom in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s, and convinced an elementary school to serve in its cafeteria the produce grown in a student-cultivated garden. Although his students were disrupted by the Vietnam War, by poverty, and by the civil rights movement, he formed lasting bonds with them--some children whom he taught in kindergarten reappear in his college lecture halls. This is a book for both freshly certified teachers and veterans, as Kohl reassuringly illustrates that through the faith and creativity of teachers, the spirit and love of learning will emerge in students.

From Publishers Weekly

Kohl (36 Children; Should We Burn Babar?), the well-known educational theorist and practitioner, relives four decades of helping children learn. Although he has always worn his progressive credentials on his sleeve, school reform is not his focus here. From his first encounters in New York's embattled Harlem schools in 1962, he describes how he came to champion education "on the ground," the complex interaction of teacher and students, and the "discipline of hope," which sets no limits on what and when a person can learn. Modestly boastful, Kohl recalls the ways he not only "learned to teach better," but the surprising way his students' approaches to new learning challenges enriched him. Kohl never stayed still but always looked for new challenges?even volunteering to teach kindergarten, "the hardest teaching job I have ever had, and one of the most magical." Class notes, assignments, school papers and testimony from students of all levels (even kindergartners, whom Kohl taught for free later in life as the fulfillment of a dream), show him to be an imaginative instructor and advocate for kids of every age and background. While most valuable for teachers looking for the instruction and inspiration of "an ongoing love affair with teaching," Kohl's book is also intriguing for anyone interested in how children learn and how we all help and hinder that process.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Printing edition (March 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684814129
• ISBN-13: 978-0684814124
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,857,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kohl's hope assumes listening., June 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The DISCIPLINE OF HOPE: LEARNING FROM A LIFETIME OF TEACHING (Hardcover)

Above all, Herbert Kohn, teacher extraordinary, says we must listen to children so we can discover how to teach them. Then, he lays a heavy one on us: ALL children can learn. And he takes us with him so we can watch him do it. In schoolrooms, homes, churches, public areas, from East coast to West coast and back again -- wherever the learners are. He lets us see why top-down public education policy is not the best way. We haven't asked the teachers who know -- and can figure out if they are allowed to do so -- how to do this thing called teaching. And never does he separate teaching and learning. They work together. Readers get to see some of the special projects Kohl has worked on and hear some of the students who have learned with him. He has done some amazing work but tells about it in such a way that it seems possible to the rest of us, whether teachers, learners, parents, or taxpayers.