• DEFINING EDUCATION REFORM
• OPPOSITION TO EDUCATION REFORM
• CHAPTER 1 - CANDIDE OR POGO?
• CHAPTER 2 - “IN THE BEGINNING”... IS EDUCATION
• CHAPTER 3 - TEACHERS
• CHAPTER 4 - ADMINISTRATORS
• CHAPTER 5 - CURRICULUM: METHODOLOGY AND CONTENT
• CHAPTER 6 - PARENTS AND CHILDREN
• CHAPTER 7 - SOCIETY
• CHAPTER 8 - THE IDEAL PROGRAM
• CHAPTER 9 - FALSE SOLUTIONS
• CHAPTER 10 - REAL SOLUTIONS

DEFINING EDUCATION REFORM

Beauty, we have been reminded many times, is in the eye of the beholder, and so is education reform. Reforming anything goes far beyond improving it because reform demands fundamental change, not mere tweaking.

Notions of education reform spread across an incredible spectrum of opinion -- from children being in a literally "unschooled" educational context to children being in highly structured schools with explicit standards in every aspect of their educational experience.

For some, education reform means incorporating technology into children's education in every possible way. For others education reform means eschewing technology in favor of developing what we term "stand-alone competence."

For still others education reform calls for incorporating a religious orientation into children's education -- with the potential for the wide variety of religious orientations that characterize American society. The possibilities are endless.

So education reform obviously has no universally accepted meaning. Conceptions of education reform spring from the complex interactions of the values, experiences, observations and opinions of each one of us.