The American educational system today seems beset on all sides by problems: from inequity to funding struggles, from poverty to teacher turnover. But there is a fundamental underlying issue with our educational system, one that profoundly impacts every aspect of its operation, yet is rarely openly confronted. With a degree in psychology and more than twenty years' experience working with children, Don Berg discovered there is one critical factor undermining our schools. With Holly Allen's help, he explains why countless intelligent and passionate people have failed to change the system, and how we can protect our own children from the downsides of the education system.
About the Author: Don Berg is an education psychology researcher, alternative education practitioner, author, and volunteer. The peer-reviewed journals Other Education and The Journal Of The Experimental Analysis Of Behavior have published his research. He has over 20 years of experience leading children in self-directed educational settings. The Village Free School in Portland, Oregon, USA, hired him to teach psychology. In order to build the nurturing capacity of all K-12 schools he founded Schools of Conscience. He volunteers with Girl Scouts and 4-H. For about a decade he has been involved in politics in Washington and Oregon. He is self-employed as a bookkeeper and currently lives at the Joyful Llama Ranch in West Linn, Oregon. Holly Allen grew up in a tiny town on Puget Sound, in Washington State, and dutifully worked her way through the local school system. She also enjoyed writing, and attended an adult fiction writing group in high school. In 1999 she graduated from Lewis and Clark College, in Portland, Oregon, with a degree in Biochemistry. She worked for several years both in that field and out of it, and during that time worked with a colleague who would eventually go on to help found a democratic school, Village Free School. Discussions with him first started her reading and thinking about education. After marrying, in 2004 she returned to school, this time the Oregon Graduate Institute in Beaverton, Oregon, to complete a Masters in Computer Science and Engineering in 2004. Programming was a better fit for her talents and personality, and she worked for a small software company in Portland until her first child was born in 2007. Having a child made the issue of education of more immediate concern and accelerated her interest in the field. She now has three children and works full-time as a homemaker in the Portland area. Initially she and her husband homeschooled their children, but for the last few years they've also attended Village Free School part-time. Her experience with her own children leads her to believe that, in education as in parenting, searching for a specific rigid pedagogy that can provide the "one right way" for all children is a fool's errand. However, Don's work focusing on nurturing as the support of primary human needs provides a basis that can improve education for everyone, independent of the pedagogy built on top of it.