Innovators in Education Series, edited by Susannah Sheffer The following books were out-of-print and reissued because of their historical significance and their relevance to today's education issues. They represent important developments in educational thought and have an ongoing contemporary application. Unfortunately, several have gone out of print again, or are hard to find, and we just have a few copies left.   Freedom and Beyond by John Holt. Many of the questions with which homeschoolers continually wrestle are addressed in this book, in Holt's clear, eloquent, and comprehensive style. What's the difference between "structured" and "unstructured"? Between coercive and natural authority? What does discipline really mean? What happens when kids who are not used to making choices about their learning suddenly get this opportunity? What tensions arise, and how can we help? Holt's exploration of these questions would be enough to make the book extremely valuable, but there's more - Holt also offers a cogent analysis of why schooling cannot cure poverty and what deschooling would mean for the poor. Fascinating, important reading. JHB Paper, 263 pages. 1995 edition. #3278JH $14.95 How to Survive in Your Native Land by James Herndon. From Susannah Sheffer's foreword to the new edition: "I envy anyone who is about to read this book for the first time. I remember discovering it in a bookstore and then reading it on a train, hardly able to keep from turning to the next passenger to say, 'Listen to this!' Instead, I copied passages out and later stuck them above my desk where they hung like beacons, reminding me of what I knew was true, what Herndon helped me to see....This is a book about teaching school, but on a deeper level it's about figuring out how to live, how to go on working in the best way you can." Paper, 192 pages. 1997 edition. #4087 $13.95 The Naked Children by Daniel Fader. This is the story of teacher Daniel Fader's and his relationship with five students in an inner city junior high school. The year is 1965. Fader tells us how he learned from his students and because of his insight and storytelling ability, we too gain insight from what he learned and, like Fader, be changed by it. Wentworth, who reads Born Free aloud to his friends, but pretends in school that he can't read--and succeeds so well that his teachers consider him hopelessly illiterate . . . Cleo, the "bad girl" leader of a gang, who develops a rehabilitation program for a fourteen-year old alcoholic pool hustler . . . Snapper, bright and alert enough to rescue a student suffering an epileptic seizure but who has difficulty responding to the simplest classroom questions. These are the naked children. During this year, Fader discovers that children hide themselves and their minds from school and that schools often fail to truly know their students. For many students, school is a boring, humiliating, and frightening experience that is disconnected from the lives they live. The lessons he learned then still apply directly to what doesn't work and what could work in today's school." "[These children] and others developed a special formula for survival: 'It's smart to play dumb.' Meet them and the man who taught and learned from them in one of the most inspiring books about ghetto life." - Library Journal. Paper, 237 pages. 1996 edition. Originally written in 1971. #3978 $14.95 Uptaught by Ken Macrorie (Innovator's in Education Series) - In this passionate book, Ken Macrorie - an English teacher - lays the blame for classroom dissatisfaction on the faculty, epitomized by Percival the computer, blind electronic enforcer of the academic cliches. Percival asks students to express something worthwhile then denies them a true voice in which to say it. He functions well in the university, dedicated to the free pursuit of truth and organized to systematically prevent it. Macrorie, once a Percival himself, writes with perception and humor of his own frustrating voyage out of darkness. He admits the feeling of power that came when he discovered the key to what he calls "The Third Way" of teaching, a path toward mutual respect and instructive dialogue. Originally published in 1970, Uptaught is not a historian's or a social scientist's attempt to make sense of that roiling era, but a kind of extended Tom Paine-like pamphlet produced by many individual students and a few teachers who had awakened to find they could write their true voices and feelings. "....a splendid...book about the teaching of English and particularly writing." - John Holt Paper, 208 pages. 8.5"x5.75"x.5". #3964 $14.95 The Way It Spozed to Be by James Herndon. We all know what's "spozed" to happen in school, but what happens when one new English teacher doesn't follow the rules? In Herndon's classroom, what happened was that students began learning and caring about learning, often for the first time. And what happened was that the teacher got fired. But Herndon's powerful story endures; this account of a year in a ghetto is not a hook one easily forgets. JHB Cover has a couple of minor creases. Paper, 188 pages. 1997 edition. #4079 $13.95   What Do I Do Monday? by John Holt. This is Holt's classic answer to teachers who asked, "How can I put all your ideas into practice myself, with my kids?" The book contains hundreds of things to do or try - "measuring speed," "measuring strength," "fractions," "recording talk," "writing for ourselves," "writing for others," and much more. Also a hard-hitting look at what's wrong with marking and grading, at what can help troubled children, and at the difference between "teacher as cop" and "teacher as guide." Holt wrote that of all his books, he felt that this was the one homeschoolers would find most practical. Paper, 300 pages. 1995 edition. #3684 $15.95