I liked reading this book. It's a collection of fifty very short narratives from a variety of people who describe a high-impact incident in their educations. In general, these center on the essential idea of the book: Effective education is challenging, engaging, supportive, relevant, and experiential. And for these fifty people, for at least one magical moment in their lives, it really was one or more of those things.
I'm a retired educator (twenty-six years teaching high school English and another nine years as a district-level curriculum and assessment specialist), so I like reading about people who had magical moments in their school experiences, moments when something ineffable happened, when things just fit together. I had similar moments in my own education, and I can honestly say that I facilitated some of those moments for my students, too.
However, once the warm fuzzies faded a little, I realized that something is missing here. In fact, a number of "somethings" are missing.
First, it may well be the case that your real, lasting education is what you have left when you've forgotten all of the specific things you learned in school. That's actually the case for the fifty people in the book who tell us their stories. However, those specific things actually were taught and learned. Those things are, in effect, the bricks that make up the good-looking, long-lasting walls that our fifty people have. It's not enough for a teacher to have a good heart, to be dedicated to his or her students, to go the extra mile to reach out to a forgotten or misunderstood kid. It may be necessary to do those things, but it's not sufficient. A good teacher also has to be the master of a curriculum, and he or she has to teach it well.
How do we know if it's taught well? We have to assess it. An underlying theme of this book is that our current reliance on performance-based testing has done harm to real education. I'd argue that many of those-- particularly those with political axes to grind-- who most strongly advocate testing don't really understand educational assessment, and they frequently and grossly misapply the data that the testing produces. However, that's not an argument for eliminating the testing in order to focus on producing warm fuzzies in our students.
A second missing thing is a role for parents and students themselves in education. Education isn't something that a school does to or for its students; rather, education is something that students do for themselves, with the guidance of educators and the motivational support from their parents. There literally is not one word in this book about the responsibility that individual students and parents have to reach out and grasp the educations they are being offered.
Having made those criticisms, do I think the book is worth reading or valuable? Yes to both of those. The stresses of operating schools and teaching in classrooms can cause educators to lose focus on the essential fact of school: Each student's education education is the result of a meaningful interaction between the student and the teacher involving the subject at hand.
The fifty people who tell their stories in this book are educated in that sense. Those who provided the interactions they describe deserve to be recognized and honored for their work. That's what the book does.
