There are a couple efforts I’m involved in, and others I am aware of, to try and make the practice of education in this country more humanistic and more closely aligned with our country’s democratic values. One such effort is currently called “Educating for Human Greatness” (based on a book by the same title by the group’s founder Lynn Stoddard) and is endorsed by a number of progressive educators across the country. Click on the links to see EfHG’s proposal (including bios of key supporters) for transforming our education system and the group’s networking forum on Ning.

If you check out the EfHG proposal you can see that it addresses the need to transform the role of teachers and schools in the educational process but really says nothing about the role of parents in that transformation. Some of the people that were involved in the email discussion around starting the group were concerned that this was an important omission. I have heard this in other educational forums, that you cannot transform education without transforming parents and parenting, since it is the expectations of parents that play a large role in keeping our schools untransformed. Continue reading →