Free School Teaching: A Journey into Radical Progressive Education (Paperback)

~ (Author)
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Product Description

Chronicles the author's personal and professional journey within the American educational system. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Free School Teaching is the personal and professional journey of one teacher within the American educational system. Faced with mounting frustrations in her own traditional, middle school classroom and having little success in resolving them, Kristan Accles Morrison decided to seek out answers, first by immersing herself in the academic literature of critical education theory and then by turning to the field. While the literature on progressive education gave her hope that things could be better for students locked into America's traditional education system, she wanted to find a firsthand example of how these ideas played out in practice. Morrison found a radical "free school" in Albany, New York, that embodied the ideas found in the literature, and over a period of three months she observed and documented differences between alternative and traditional schools. In trying to reconcile the gap between those systems, Morrison details what she learned about teachers, students, curriculum, and the entire conception of why we educate our children.

"The effects of standardized competitive schooling are severe and they need to be critically reported as publicly and as often as possible. The stories of democratic schools, such as the one profiled here, provide inspirational alternatives. This is a book with an important story to tell." -- Ron Miller, author of Free School, Free People: Education and Democracy after the 1960s --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press; 1 edition (June 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791471489
• ISBN-13: 978-0791471487
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,986,731 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An honest look at the workings of the hidden curriculum on the author herself , February 23, 2008

By	Kirsten Olson (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A first book by Morrison, who is an assistant professor at Radford University, this is an exceptionally honest look at the workings of the hidden curriculum on a highly successful, "good test taker" and teacher pleaser--the author herself--and her movement to a critical radical educator. Although Morrison locates herself within the academy--she says she still has to make a living--through frank exploration of her own student biography and early teaching years Morrison etches a picture of traditional schooling as one which instructs pupils to be insensible to others `not of one's academic track and class,' to be almost wholly dependent on external validation for pleasure in learning, and to locate knowledge as something fixed and outside of oneself. At the turning point of this book, Morrison spends time at the renowned Albany Free School, in Albany, New York, and is transformed. There she, "learned a different way of being--how to be my whole self to the students, to see the children as whole people, and to connect and cooperate with others." This is a wonderfully candid book, particularly in its frank exploration of Morrison's enjoyment of her teacher power over her students in her early years as an instructor, and the ways in which school taught her to suppress her desire to learn more.