Rather than fill an endless number of pages with details of an endless number of books, I’ll confine myself to suggesting the following titles for people interested in reading more about education, parenting and life:
Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. A beautiful book describing an ‘alternative’ school in Japan. This is a memoir by one of its ex-students, a woman who became a well-known Japanese media personality.
The school was destroyed by fire in the Tokyo air raids in 1945.
Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window, Kodansha International, Japan, 2012.
Magister Ludi a.k.a. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. Everything by Hesse should of course be compulsory reading for everyone, but this is my favourite of his books (along with Siddhartha). It is a wonderful dissertation upon education as it could and perhaps should be.
Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Switzerland, 1943.
Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School by Leila Berg. Leila Berg wrote in quite a few different genres and it’s worth checking out anything she wrote in any of them! But I’d recommend this as the first one on her list to read. It’s the story of the life and death of an innovative, progressive, government secondary school in London.
Leila Berg, Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School, Penguin, London, 1968.
Fitzroy Community School by Philip O’Carroll and Faye Berryman. Pioneers in alternative education in Australia, Philip and Faye have written a detailed history of their remarkable school, and included their philosophy of how schools should be operated. The first chapter is a startling description of how and why most parent-run schools implode. Fitzroy Community School turned 40 in 2016.
Philip O’Carroll and Faye Berryman, Fitzroy Community School, Fitzroy Programs, Australia, 2015.
The Drama of being a Child a.k.a. The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller. Again, pretty much anything Alice Miller wrote is worth reading, although sometimes the content can get a bit repetitive. The Drama of being a Child is a confronting yet sympathetic exploration of the many ways in which children can be dreadfully damaged by the very people who are primarily responsible for their care.
Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, Basic Books, USA, 1979.
Indiscretions of a Headmistress by Betty Archdale. Archdale, Headmistress of Sydney Anglican girls’ school, Abbotsleigh, was no intellectual, but she was a real personality who did what she thought was right, regardless of the pompous and important people she offended. If you know the politics of Sydney Anglican Diocese, you would enjoy some of her stories, including the one about the local curate who referred ‘all through a sermon [at the school] to the Revised Standard Virgin, instead of Revised Standard Version, of the Bible.’
Betty Archdale, Indiscretions of a Headmistress, Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1972.
Death at an Early Age by Jonathan Kozol. Kozol is the teacher I’ve mentioned in The Art of Growing Up who was sacked for reading a Langston Hughes poem to his students. This book is a blistering account of some of the many things wrong with the model of schooling which we are following in the Western world.
Here’s a piece of writing by one of Kozol’s young students, with the original spelling unaltered:
In my school, I see dirty boards and I see papers on the floor. I see an old browken window with a sign on it saying, Do not unlock this window are browken. And I see cracks in the walls and I see old books with ink poured all over them and I see old painting hanging on the wall. I see old alfurbet letter hanging on one nail on the wall. I see a dirty fire exit I see a old closet with supplys for the class. I see pigeons flying all over the school. I see old freght trains throgh the fence of the school yard. I see pictures of countrys hanging on the wall and I see desks with wrighting all over the top of the desks and insited of the desk.
Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools, Penguin, New York, 1967 and 1985, (first published 1967).
Anton Makarenko: His Life and His Work in Education by Anton Makarenko. (Note that different people spell his surname in different ways.) This book can be downloaded at marxists.org/reference/archive/makarenko/works/life-and-work.pdf
Makarenko was a big fan of Maxim Gorky, and Gorky actually visited the ‘colony’ which Makarenko created in Russia for young criminals, orphans and homeless kids. Here’s a sample from the book; a man remembering how he was taken out of jail by Makarenko, to go to the ‘colony’:
‘Good,’ Makarenko said, and turned to the governor. ‘So we can go straight from here?’
‘Yes, go along,’ the governor said. ‘Now mind, Kalabalin . . .’
‘Please don’t, everything will be alright,’ Makarenko interrupted. ‘Goodbye. Come along, Semyon.’
I love that exchange between Makarenko and the governor; where Makarenko cuts the governor off immediately, knowing full well that the man is about to launch into a pious sermon to Kalabalin on how ‘he’d better be careful and behave himself properly or else . . .’
Little moments can count for a lot.
Anton Makarenko, The Road to Life, quoted in Kumarin, Anton Makarenko
Impro and Impro for Storytellers by Keith Johnstone. These books are not specifically about education or teaching, but they were hugely influential for me. Johnstone is one of those geniuses who can take what we knew unconsciously and teach it to us so that it becomes part of our conscious understanding.
Keith Johnstone, Impro, Faber & Faber, London, 1979. Keith Johnstone, Impro for Storytellers, Routledge, London, 1999.
Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth by E.T. Bazeley. Homer Lane established a farm community, a ‘reformatory’, for fifty or so young criminals in the English countryside, in 1914. His approach was unorthodox but highly successful. A.S. Neill referred to Homer Lane as ‘the most influential factor’ in his life. Sadly, the Little Commonwealth was killed off by several things, including dissension within the Committee which governed it, and an accusation by a teenage girl of some sort of sexual misconduct by Lane. It seems likely that the accusation was baseless, but it did result in the Commonwealth closing.
E.T. Bazeley, Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth, Allen & Unwin, London, 1928.
Dibs in Search of Self by Virginia Axline. An account, taken from recorded play therapy sessions with a boy who is aged five when we first meet him. He is considered ‘mentally retarded’ by his mother, and his paediatrician has asked ‘Mentally retarded? Psychotic? Brain-damaged? Who can get close enough to find out what makes him tick?’ The book is a deeply moving account which offers profound insights to the development of a young child.
Virginia M. Axline, Dibs in Search of Self, Penguin Press, Melbourne, 1990.