It is not surprising that so little learning takes place in school. Teachers and principals are not employed for their educational skills, but for their ability to enforce law and order, to keep students under control. (Author/SJL)

The author draws an analogy between today's school system and an assembly line, deploring the notion that all children are taught the same thing at the same time, ending in humiliation, disgrace, and failure for some, and nonchallenging academic activities for others. (KC)

Described is the change in teaching style--from open and unstructured to rigid and traditional--undergone by a teacher who found his students did not like or understand freedom in the classroom. (KC)

Academic rigor has been viewed as an educational monster and so it is if defined in terms of lockstep curriculum, harsh discipline, and useless rote learning. Rigor in its best sense means challenging each student toward individual excellence. This kind of rigor should be welcomed. (SJL)

The puritan ethic that any work is good and any idleness bad is still very active in our schools. Many teachers and parents resist the idea that schoolwork needn't be overly difficult and joyless. (SJL)

Almost every instance of tension between the realm of the ideal and the world of reality fosters difficulties for academic freedom. Considers a number of factors that are obstacles to preserving academic freedom. (Author/RK)

The author decries the tactics of one-issue pressure groups seeking to censor sex education and other educational activities. He sees these groups as an anti-intellectual force attacking the free exchange of ideas, which is the major purpose and function of schools in a democracy. (SJL)

Compares and contrasts the role of the school principal in American and British schools, focusing on the author's personal experiences in observing and dealing with principals. Also considers administrator-teacher relationships and organizational patterns within school systems, suggesting that students (not principals/superintendents) be at the…

The author criticizes the fact that the PTA takes positions on television programing, believing the interest of the PTA should be in what goes on in classrooms, not in what comes into the home via television. (KC)

In an interview with the editor of HSJ, Dr. James S. Coleman discusses changes in the values, attitudes, and beliefs of adolescents since the late 1950s. He also discusses the report he authored, the Coleman Report of 1966; court legislation; busing and its effect on achievement; and educational research. (KC)

The author reviews research on the relevance of teaching grammar to improve composition skills and finds that research studies conducted over the past 75 years have indicated there is no correlation between ability in grammar and quality of composition. (KC)

The author contends that discipline problems are not caused by television, family problems, drugs or integration, but by the teacher and the administrator due to their absurd rules and ridiculous activities. (KC)

The author describes a modern one-room schoolhouse in Ocracoke, North Carolina--an open plan building in which six teachers instruct students aged 6 through 17. He extols the school's individualized learning environment, flexibility, and humanistic philosophy. (SJL)

Although the public worries over the state of the arts in the schools, it has actual disdain for the arts in society. The schools actively contribute to America's aesthetic atrophy by treating art as a frill. We can change this situation by providing serious art instruction at all grade levels. (Author/SJL)

The author argues that there is no profession in which the gulf between professional training and practical application is quite as wide as it is in teaching. He asserts that teacher educators and public schools are now--and always have been--engaged in ideological warfare. (Author/SJL)