ABOUT THIS BOOK

Seymour Sarason, in the words of Carl Glickman, is "one of America's seminal thinkers about public education." For over four decades his has been a voice of much-needed skepticism about our plans for school reform, teacher training, and educational psychology. Now, for the first time, Sarason's essential writings on these and other issues are collected together, offering student and researcher alike with the range, depth, and originality of Sarason's contributions to American thinking on schooling.As we go from debate to debate on issues such as school choice, charter schools, inclusive education, national standards, and other problems that seem to drag on without solution, Sarason's critical stance on the folly of many of our attempts to fix schools has always had at the center a concern for the main players in our educational institutions: the students, the teachers and the parents. Any plans that cannot account for their well-being are doomed to failure. And in the face of such failure, the clarity of Sarason's vision for real educational success is a much-needed antidote to much of the rhetoric that currently passes for substantial debate.A wide-ranging and comprehensive selection of Sarason's most significant writings, The Skeptical Visionary should find a prized space on any student's or teacher's bookshelf.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Robert Fried is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Northeastern University, and is the author of The Passionate Teacher: A Practical Guide and The Passionate Learner: How Teachers and Parents Can Help Children Reclaim the Joy of Discovery.Seymour Sarason is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. He is the author of over forty books and is considered to be one of the most significant researchers in education and educational psychology in the country.

REVIEWS

"What does it take for the constituents of education—teachers, students, parents, administrators, and, above all, the culture of the school—to work together synergistically? To find out, read this distillation of Seymour Sarason's fifty years of reflections—always challenging, often wise."—Howard Gardner, author of Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet

"Every time I'm getting too cocky, and think I've got 'the answer,' I read and reread Sarason. He pricks my conscience, but in such a delightful way that I go back for more. He goads me into thinking deeper, and being a bit more honest with myself. I find myself always wanting to argue back, wiggle out a bit, build a roadblock to his devastating logic. Of course, that's what Sarason's after—and it works. This collection puts together most of my favorites and it invites a new generation of readers to become skeptical idealists, in the best and most necessary sense of that phrase."—Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem

"The Skeptical Visionary is an indispensable guide to understanding one of the most thoughtful education thinkers of the 20th century—a must-read for practitioners and policymakers alike. Fried's introductory essay provides a concise and illuminating framework for viewing the work of Sarason. This work is an invaluable contribution to the literature of school reform."—Tony Wagner, Co-Director, Change Leadership Group, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, and author of Making the Grade: Reinventing America's Schools

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editor's Note and AcknowledgmentsEditor's Introduction: Seymour Sarason: Sculptor of IdeasPart I: The Teacher1. Powerlessness Unanticipated2. You Know More Than You Think and More Than They Give You Credit For3. Why Teachers Must Also Be Psychologists4. Teaching as a Lonely Profession5. Power Relationships in the Classroom6. Constitutional Issues in the Classroom7. The "Nonreading" ProfessionalPart II: The School8. The School Culture and Processes of Change9. Underestimating Complexity10. Programmatic and Behavioral Regularities11. Confronting Intractability12. Conceptualizing the Educational System13. Predictable Features and Problems in the Creation of Charter Schools and Other New Organizational SettingsPart III: Students and Parents14. Themes from Childhood and Adolescence15. Columbine High School and Contexts of Productive Learning16. An Overarching Goal for Students17. Students as Teachers18. Parental Involvement and Power Struggles: Applying the Political Principle to Relationships Within the School and Beyond19. The Governors: Teachers and ParentsPart IV: The Political and Policy Agenda20. The Non-Learning, Non-Self-Correcting System21. Are Schools Unique Organizations?22. Our Expectations of Political Leaders23. America's Only Serious Education President24. What Should We Do?Part V: Tables of Contents from Sarason's Books on EducationEducational Reform: A Self-Scrutinizing MemoirQuestions You Should Ask About Charter Schools and VouchersAmerican Psychology and SchoolsTeaching as a Performing ArtCharter Schools: Another Flawed Educational Reform?Crossing Boundaries: Collaboration, Coordination, and the Redefinition of ResourcesPolitical Leadership and Educational FailureHow Schools Might Be Governed and WhyBarometers of Change: Individual, Educational, and Social TransformationRevisiting "The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change"Parental Involvement and the Political PrincipleSchool Change: The Personal Development of a Point of ViewPsychoanalysis, General Custer and the Verdicts of History and Other Essays on Psychology in the Social SceneLetters to a Serious Education PresidentYou Are Thinking of Teaching? Opportunities, Problems, RealitiesThe Care for Change: Rethinking the Preparation of EducatorsThe Predictable Failure of Educational ReformThe Challenge of Art to PsychologyThe Making of an American Psychologist: An AutobiographySchooling in America: Scapegoat and SalvationEducational Handicap, Public Policy, and Social History: A Broadened Perspective on Mental RetardationWork, Aging, and Social Change: Professionals and the One Life-One Career ImperativeThe Creation of Settings and the Future SocietiesThe Culture o f the School and the Problem of ChangeThe Psycho-Educational Clinic: Papers and Research StudiesThe Preparation of Teachers: A n Unstudied Problem in EducationAnxiety in Elementary School Children: A Report of Research