Small Schools by Mike Klonsky and Susan Klonsky
Here’s a review I didn’t mean to write. I read most of the book in the summer of 2008, while I was in New Orleans, helping (re)organize school teachers. What happened? I thought the book covered important background about what happened with small schools. It reviews their progressive origins. And it details how the corporations and foundations and government grabbed their banner and turned them into something very different. And I should have reviewed and recommended it. The background matters. The narrative matters. The dark fable matters.
But I didn’t write then. Why not? And why now?
Democratic Schools are good, and it is possible to create small schools that are democratic. YES….
became: Small schools are good. NO.
I didn’t write because I was not ready to share my critical evaluation of the (well-meaning,
