A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools

In today's high schools, education is often reduced to a means of achieving financial security, leading to an overemphasis on quantifiable measures of performance. This approach encourages academically talented students to focus on test scores and rankings rather than intellectual enrichment, and discourages students with non-academic talents from pursuing them. A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools advocates instead a unifying educational aim of producing better adults, which would encompass all aspects of students' lives: intellectual, physical, moral, spiritual, social, vocational, aesthetic, and civic. Nel Noddings offers suggestions to improve high schools by increasing collegiality among students and faculty, enriching curricula with interdisciplinary themes, renewing vocational education programs, addressing parenting and homemaking, and professionalizing the teaching force. This thought-provoking book will act as an important guide for teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and policy makers.

Introduction; 1. Unity of purpose; 2. Vocational programs; 3. What might have been: women's traditional interests; 4. A better adult: continuing the search; 5. Parenting; 6. The Common Core Standards; 7. Critical thinking; 8. Collegiality, caring, and continuity; 9. The curriculum and its setting; 10. Planning, enacting, evaluating; 11. The professional preparation of teachers; 12. Reflecting on the brighter vision.

Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University, California. She is the author of nineteen books, including Critical Lessons: What our Schools Should Teach (2006), Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War (2011) and Education and Democracy in the 21st Century (2013).