Synopses & Reviews
"I Won't Learn From You," Herb Kohl's now-classic essay on "not learning," or refusing to learn, is available for the first time in an affordable paperback edition along with four other landmark essays. Drawing on an idea of Martin Luther King Jr.'s, Kohl argues for "creative maladjustment" in the classroom and anywhere else that students' intelligence, dignity, or integrity are compromised by a teacher, an institution, or a larger social mindset.
This volume also includes "The Tattooed Man," Kohl's autobiographical essay about "hopemongering," which Kohl finds essential for all effective teaching in these difficult times.
Review
"There is more insight in these pages than in many longer works."
—The Progressive
About the Author
Herbert Kohl is one of the country's leading educators and the author of more than forty books, including the classic 36 Children. Recipient of the National Book Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, among others, he was founder and first director of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative and established the PEN West Center in San Francisco. Kohl lives in Point Arena, California.
Table of Contents
ContentsForeword to the 1995 edition by Jonathan Kozol IX
Foreword by Colin Greer X
Preface XIII
Acknowledgements XVII
I Won't Learn From You I
The Tattoed Man: Confessions of a Hopemonger 33
Excellence, Equality, and Equity 89
Uncommon Differences: On Political Correctness,
Core Curriculum, and Democracy in Education 103
Creative Maladjustment and The Struggle for Public Education 127