Carrots

In 1995, Heinemann, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, publishing house with a strong interest in teacher professional development, began to bring back into print a number of important education books that had virtually disappeared, most of them by authors seeking to shake things up. As the publisher puts it, this Innovators in Education series looks for books "that are both historically significant and that speak directly to today's concerns." Heinemann kicked off the series with two titles by the eloquent schooling critic John Holt-- What Do I Do Monday and Freedom and Beyond --and added two more-- Uptaught , by Ken Macrorie, and The Naked Children , by Daniel Fader--last year. This year, the company reprinted two volumes by James Herndon, a California teacher who tried to explode the mindless routine of schooling. In February 1998, it will publish two out-of-print titles by acclaimed education writer and gadfly Herb Kohl.

What follows is from Herndon's 1968 gem, The Way It Spozed To Be . The book chronicles Herndon's first year as a teacher at George Washington Junior High, a school full of defeated kids. When Herndon arrives, his well-intentioned colleagues let him know "what he's spozed to do." He rejects their advice, series editor Susannah Sheffer writes in the introduction to the new edition, "in favor of something that looks chaotic and messy but is actually real and valuable." For his efforts, Herndon is fired at the end of the year. Explains Sheffer: "Results are not the point. What matters is that teachers do what they're spozed to do, that they carry on with school as we know it, not that the students are actually learning unprecedented amounts." In this short chapter, Herndon describes a conversation with a visitor from the central office.

Two days after vacation I received a note from the secretary that Mrs. X (another name I don't remember) was coming down to talk to me. Mrs. X was the district language and social...