Published: April 1, 2000

Pragmatism 101

Five young leaders make the progressive tradition their own.

Chicago's Dynamic Duo

Pragmatism 101

Mind Travel

Keeping The Faith

In his classroom, on the wall behind his students, Jesse Solomon likes to hang a sign that reads, "Could a student be doing this?" The high school math teacher can't help but see those words dozens of times during the day, a reminder to lay off the lecturing. "I teach math by trying to pose problems and create situations where kids have to have conversations about how they would do a piece of mathematics and how that piece of mathematics connects to other pieces of mathematics," Solomon explains.

For students accustomed to math presented as a series of rules to memorize, absolutes to seek, and blanks to fill in, Solomon's classes at the City on a Hill Public Charter School in Boston must come as a shock. The man whom school co-founder and president Sarah Kass calls "the best teacher I've ever met" listens more than he talks and treats kids as if they are fellow mathematicians. He is the master of the maddening, noncommital answer that forces kids to manipulate information for themselves. "Maybe," he tells one student. "I don't know, try it and...