From the book jacket:

School is an immensely powerful institution in most people's lives. 
From our earliest days of kindergarten through college we get potent messages about our worth, our capacities, and our ability to negotiate life in school. In today's school reform climate we stay in school longer, and scores on standardized tests and grade point averages matter more than ever.  Mostly, we think of this as only good: better jobs, more competitive employees, greater viability in a global world.

What though, of the negative effects of schooling? In this new book, Kirsten Olson explores the wounds of schooling, the ways in which our educational system and its assumptions can truncate our greatest strengths: our compassion, our creativity, and our ability to imagine. Through individual learning stories she explores: 

  • Wounds of Creativity

  • Wounds of Compliance

  • Wounds of Rebelliousness

  • Wounds that Numb

  • Wounds of Underestimation

  • Wound of Perfectionism

Without blame or reprehension, Olson looks at the reasons why educational systems are often hostile to students, and how schools still encourage compliance and narrowly focused understandings of learning, ability and creativity. Asking readers to explore their own wounds, so that they can more effectively help their students and children, the book offers avenues for navigating the emotional and psychological territory of school. Suggesting that teachers, parents and school systems speak more frankly about the weaknesses of the educational system, to unmask some of its myths, Olson proposes creating environments of nurture, enjoyment and appreciation in a child's world that balance lives increasingly subsumed by school. Children themselves also need to be encouraged to see what school is about: what the institution has to offer and what it cannot, and how to reap education's benefits without being consumed by it. Recognizing the vulnerability of most children in the educational system, and the moral and spiritual force of an educational system that spends more and more time in testing and evaluation, parents, teachers and children need help understanding the messages school sends. Let the journey begin.


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