Description: Grant and Murray describe the evolution taking place in the teaching profession over the last 100 years, and then focus on recent experiments that have given teachers the power to shape their schools and mentor young educators.
Brief description: Gerald Grant is Hannah Hammond Professor of Education and Sociology, Emeritus, at Syracuse University.
Review Quotes: In this admirably inclusive history of the marvels and malaise of our public school system, a portrait emerges of its unsung heroes. For all the broad sweep of reform movements and power struggles at the top, Grant and Murray are most intrigued and inspired by the dreams and disappointments of those individual schoolteachers who dared to challenge the hierarchy and follow their own visions toward a more exciting classroom life for themselves and their students. It is this quest for self direction that may define the next century of teaching in America. If the authors' radical notion is valid, that the art of teaching is the same whether practiced in grad school or the university, then we as a nation must decide: How is the dignity of the teacher-child relationship to be enhanced and valued? Teaching in America helps us gain the necessary perspective with which to debate these and other urgent issues concerning the future of our schools.--Vivian Gussin Paley, author of The Girl with the Brown Crayon (Harvard)