Discusses the meaning conveyed to children from books like "Babar, the Elephant," and "Pinocchio," and takes a look at the history of public education

Discusses the meaning conveyed to children from books like "Babar, the Elephant," and "Pinocchio," and takes a look at the history of public education.

Gerald tells of the very unusual animals he would add to the zoo, if he were in charge.

The first paperback edition of the master educator's insights from four decades in the classroom. The Discipline of Hope chronicles veteran educator Herb Kohl's love affair with teaching since his first encounter forty years ago, chronicled in his now-classic 36 Children. Beginning with his years in New York public schools and continuing throughout his four decades of working with students from kindergarten through college across the country, Kohl has been an ardent advocate of the notion that every student can learn and every teacher must find creative ways to facilitate that learning. In The Discipline of Hope he distills the major lessons of an attentive lifetime in the classroom.

The professor and historian delivers a major critique of how political and financial attacks on the academy are undermining our system of higher education. Making a provocative foray into the public debates over higher education, acclaimed historian Ellen Schrecker argues that the American university is under attack from two fronts. On the one hand, outside pressure groups have staged massive challenges to academic freedom, beginning in the 1960s with attacks on faculty who opposed the Vietnam War, and resurfacing more recently with well-funded campaigns against Middle Eastern Studies scholars. Connecting these dots, Schrecker reveals a distinct pattern of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of any scholarly study that threatens the status quo. At the same time, Schrecker deftly chronicles the erosion of university budgets and the encroachment of private-sector influence into academic life. From the dwindling numbers of full-time faculty to the collapse of library budgets, The Lost Soul of Higher Education depicts a system increasingly beholden to corporate America and starved of the resources it needs to educate the new generation of citizens. A sharp riposte to the conservative critics of the academy by the leading historian of the McCarthy-era witch hunts, The Lost Soul of Higher Education, reveals a system in peril—and defends the vital role of higher education in our democracy.

Attempts to enable us to view the world of ticks, flies, birds, jelly fish, and other animals through their senses, rather than our own.