Product Description

What is the purpose of education? What kind of people do we want our children to grow up to be? How can we design schools so that students will acquire the skills they'll need to live fulfilled and productive lives?

These are just a few of the questions that renowned educator Dennis Littky explores in The Big Picture: Education Is Everyone's Business. The schools Littky has created and led over the past 35 years are models for reformers everywhere: small, public schools where the curriculum is rich and meaningful, expectations are high, student progress is measured against real-world standards, and families and communities are actively engaged in the educational process.

This book is for both big "E" and small "e" educators:
* For principals and district administrators who want to change the way schools are run.
* For teachers who want students to learn passionately.
* For college admissions officers who want diverse applicants with real-world learning experiences.
* For business leaders who want a motivated and talented workforce.
* For parents who want their children to be prepared for college and for life.
* For students who want to take control over their learning . . . and want a school that is interesting, safe, respectful, and fun.
* For anyone who cares about kids.

Here, you'll find a moving account of just what is possible in education, with many of the examples drawn from the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center ("The Met") in Providence, Rhode Island--a diverse public high school with the highest rates of attendance and college acceptance in the state and a dropout rate of less than five percent. The Met exemplifies personalized learning, one student at a time.

The Big Picture is a book to re-energize educators, inspire teachers in training, and start a new conversation about kids and schools, what we want for both, and how to make it happen.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102672 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 230 pages

Customer Reviews

A challenge to American schools, a model that works
Littky's book challenges the traditional philosophy and practices of American schools. And we deserve that challenge. We are raising kids in dysfunctional schools, dysfunctional even when we believe they are working satisfactorily. At the most fundamental level the philosophy upon which the schools are based, a philosophy laid down in the Nineteenth Century designed to train people to fulfill the needs of industry, has not changed. The problem is that training is not educating. Defining the success of schools by standard tests, the method used to upgrade the dysfunctional system by No Child Left Behind only serves to make the dysfunctional system worse. America's children need a better system.

Littky, after thirty or more years of work in public schools as a principal has turned the old philosophy out the door. His objective is to lead children to love learning and that leads to radically different kinds of schools. In his schools parents are closely involved with the work in every way. Students and teachers work in small groups focusing on projects that cultivate the interests and the skills of the students. School bells do not ring interrupting the process of learning. Students open themselves to the learning process, develop confidence and the needed basic skills of writing and mathematics in the process of doing the projects that fascinate them. Learning becomes joyful. Teachers then become not loaders of information but leaders, fellow learners, who help the child develop the information necessary to the learning process. And, yes, to do this schools must be smaller than we have come to make them in the last fifty years. Huge consolidated, impersonal schools have failed. Littky demonstrates how much more effective small schools are at every level.

The results speak for themselves. Over ninety percent of the children who leave Littky's schools go on to higher education and most of those students when they come into his schools are children who have failed to flourish in traditional schools. For this and a dozen other reasons, Littky's challenge to American education is a powerful book that must not be ignored. Besides, it's a good read. The man speaks to us and we hear his passion for learning. He is his own model for the philosophy and the practice he would inculcate in his students, their parents, his teachers, and us.

American education needs a model that works. Littky offers us that model

A must read for educators, parents and others who are looking for an alternative to the current system.


This was a very interesting read for me; I highly recommend it to parents, teachers and anyone who is interested in alternatives to the public school system. I was rapidly losing my trust in the current educational system. What's most disturbing for me is all of the professionals who write about urban education, its causes and how to repair it. Often, these professionals are so far removed from the problem its incomprehensible how they can propose to interpret the real life issues that exist. Littky's common sense approach that he introduced to The Met starts with treat every child with respect; give value to their dreams and their interest. Help them discover THEIR talents. Help them find the connection in putting their talents and interest towards building a life goal. Hire only educators who embrace this vision, and recognize that as teachers they are also part of the learning experience. I was most inspired by Littky's belief that all of the children who walk through the door of The Met will graduate, will succeed and will do something great with their lives. Believing in them, makes them believe in themselves. To quote Franklin Covey "begin with the end in mind".

Inspired
This book is truly an inspiration for me, as a future teacher. The points the author hits coincide with what I believe to be the purpose of education. Although the message is somewhat idealistic, I believe that to be a quality in order for teachers to motivate the change they wish to see in their students :)