Comment / Books

A LETTER TO TEACHERS: Reflections on Schooling and the Art of Teaching, by Vito Perrone. (JosseyBass, $12.95.) Early on, Perrone writes about North Dakota students who feel betrayed when they learn from a visiting speaker the full destructive capabilities of the nuclear warheads that are tucked into the surrounding prairie. Why, the students wonder, have such weapons never been a part of their studies? The problem, according to the author, is that school has long functioned as a fortress, walling off the outside world as if it would contaminate the thoroughly sanitized educational process. In this fortress, the teacher plays but a minor role, dispensing what Alfred Whitehead called "inert facts.'' Teachers, though, don't have to accept these dehumanizing conditions: Perrone encourages them to connect the school with the larger world, to take needed risks, reclaiming their profession as an art rather than a science, a studied passion rather than a series of lifeless techniques. Written with both conviction and common sense, A Letter to Teachers succeeds in refocusing our attention on the ideals rather than the pitfalls of teaching.