Volume 6, Number 12 · July 7, 1966
Recess
By Edgar Z. Friedenberg
Voices in the Classroom
by Peter Schrag
Beacon, 292 pp., $5.95
The Schoolchildren
by Mary Frances Greene, by Oleta Ryan
Pantheon, 227 pp., $4.95
Up the Down Staircase
by Bel Kaufman
Prentice Hall, 340 pp., $4.95
All three of these books are about the process of schooling in America; and each of them is in its own way a source of both pleasure and instruction. It would be difficult to lay any one of them aside unfinished. Yet, by the canons of their different genres, their quality varies widely. Voices in the Classroom is a highly competent descriptive analysis of the current state of American education as this is revealed in case studies of school systems in seven areas of the nation. Each of these is carefully selected to show specifically how the characteristics of a particular region set the context of education locally, creating problems, limiting educational possibilities, but also, of course, providing such opportunities as exist. Schrag is a very precise observer with a keen eye for relevance and deep understanding of the place of the school in the local social order. His writing is concrete, perceptive, and unsentimental.
Review, 2198 words
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