For more information on these books, contact the publisher or your local library or bookstore.
Curriculum & Methods
The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom?, by Jeanne S. Chall (Guilford Publications, 72 Spring St., New York, NY 10012; 206 pp., $25 hardcover). Addresses one of the central issues in education: how best to instruct students. Written by Jeanne S. Chall, an emeritus professor of education at Harvard University until her death last year and the founder and director of the Harvard Reading Program, this volume reviews and evaluates many of the educational reforms and innovations that have been proposed and employed over the past century, comparing the achievement rates that result from traditional, teacher-centered approaches with those resulting from progressive, student- centered methods.
Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy, by Stephen Macedo (Harvard University Press, 79 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138; 343 pp., $45 hardcover). Examines the historical background of many of today’s public school controversies, addressing in particular the contemporary complaints of public education’s critics. The author, a professor of politics at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, argues that society should reject uncritical multiculturalism, the concept of a parental right to decide what children will learn, and blind faith in market choices.
School Choice
The Market Approach to Education: An Analysis of America’s First Voucher Program, by John F. Witte (Princeton University Press, 41 William St., Princeton, NJ 08540; 221 pp., $29.95 hardcover). Seeks to provide a framework for understanding the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and its implications for the broader application of market-based approaches to American education. The author, a University of Wisconsin educational researcher who has studied the Milwaukee experiment over time, suggests that while the voucher program for low-income children seems to be working in the specific case of Milwaukee, programs applied universally and across the socioeconomic spectrum would not necessarily promote equal education.
Higher Education
Success Without College, by Linda Lee (Doubleday, 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036; 318 pp., $19.95 hardcover). Challenges the widely held belief that college is the path for any person who wants to do well in life. The author, an editor and writer for The New York Times, explores why college may not be right for even the brightest of students (at least not right away) and profiles many people who have succeeded without a college degree—among them Frank Lloyd Wright,Walter Cronkite, and the writer Fran Lebowitz.
Child Development
The Erik Erikson Reader, selected and edited by Robert Coles (W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110; 526 pp., $35 hardcover). A collection of essays by one of the world’s leading figures in the fields of psychoanalysis and human development. The book’s four sections provide an extensive overview of Erikson’s career: “On Children: Nearby and Far Away"; “On Psychoanalysis and Human Development"; “On Leaders"; and “On Moral Matters.”
