This collection of essays from "The New Republic" offers a fresh look at America's current educational crisis. The approach used in the English primary schools is analyzed and found valuable. Also detailed are varieties of sound educational practice found in a New Zealand primary school, in a Colorado classroom, and in a Harlem street academy for high school drop outs. In all these new learning environments, the author finds common threads of freedom, a new conception of the teacher's role, an emphasis on standards of workmanship, and an implicit understanding that a full childhood is the best preparation for life. By contrast, several reports emphasize the "shoddiness and confusion" prevalent on the American scene--in the middle class high school, in educational technology, in franchised day care, in the "pathological professionalism" of the educational system. (Author/WY)