Abstract
This book gives us a vivid image of American secondary education and of the serious reform effort by the Coalition of Essential Schools. Its author, Theodore R. Sizer, formerly dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education and headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., is an university professor emeritus at Brown University and chairman of the Coalition of Essential Schools in Providence, R.I. He is already known in Japan as one of America's leading educational reformers and as the author of his previous books, HORACE'S COMPROMISE in 1984 and HORACE'S SCHOOL in 1992. In this book, the newest one of this Horace trilogy, the author reflects on his years in the school reform effort. The main principles of his reform effort through the Coalition of Essential Schools are summarized as follows: 1 The school should focus on helping adolescents learn to use their minds well. 2 The school's goals should be simple: that each student master a limited number of essential skills and areas of knowledge. The aphorism "less is more" should dominate: curricular decisions should be guided by the aim of thorough student mastery rather than by an effort merely to cover content. 3 The school's goals should apply to all students. School practice should be tailor-made to meet the needs of every group or class of adolescents. 4 Teaching and learning should be personalized. Efforts should be directed toward a goal that no teacher have direct responsibility for more than eighty students. 5 The metaphor of the school should be student-as-worker and teacher-as-coach rather than teacher-as-deliverer-of-instructional-services. 6 Students entering secondary school studies are those who can show competence in language and elementary mathematics. The diploma should be awarded upon a successful final demonstration of mastery for graduation-an "Exhibition." 7 The tone of the school should stress values of unanxious expectation ("I won't threaten you but I expect much of you"), of trust and of decency. Parents should be treated as essential collaborators. 8 The principal and teachers should perceive themselves as generalists first (teachers and scholars in general education) and specialists second (experts in one particular discipline). 9 Ultimate administrative and budget targets should not exceed that at traditional schools by more than 10 percent. It seems to me that some of these principles would provide the Japanese readers with important lessons to break through the problem of too much cramming and too little creative or individualistic thinking in Japanese secondary education. This book is also recommendable to Japanese researchers who have been studying American educational reform since the early 1980s.
