The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice

Educators, politicians, parents, and even students are consumed with speaking the language of academic achievement. Yet something is missing in the current focus on accountability, standardized testing, and adequate yearly progress. If schools continue to focus the conversation on rigor and accountability and ignore more human elements of education, many students may miss out on opportunities to discover the richness of individual exploration that schools can foster.

In The Best Schools, Armstrong urges educators to leave narrow definitions of learning behind and return to the great thinkers of the past 100 years—Montessori, Piaget, Freud, Steiner, Erikson, Dewey, Elkind, Gardner—and to the language of human development and the whole child.

The Best Schools highlights examples of educational programs that are honoring students' differences, using developmentally appropriate practices, and promoting a humane approach to education that includes the following elements:

* An emphasis on play for early childhood learning.

* Theme- and project-based learning for elementary school students.

* Active learning that recognizes the social, emotional, and cognitive needs of adolescents in middle schools.

* Mentoring, apprenticeships, and cooperative education for high school students.

Educators in "the best schools" recognize the differences in the physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual worlds of students of different ages. This book will help educators reflect on how to help each student reach his or her true potential, how to inspire each child and adolescent to discover an inner passion to learn, and how to honor the unique journey of each individual through life.

Thomas M. Armstrong is a veteran of the early 1960s civil rights movement in his native Mississippi. He was at the forefront of early protests led by black Southerners for voting rights and equal public accommodations from 1958-1961, resulting in threats that had him running for his life. Mr. Armstrong moved to Chicago where he has resided since 1964. He remains closely allied with other former Freedom Riders and civil rights workers around the country and often speaks at schools and civic organizations such as the African American Leadership Roundtable in Chicago. He has been the subject of scholarly research by respected academics, sought after for major media interviews, and featured in print from critically acclaimed books to a Forbes magazine publication. The documentary "Freedom Riders" will be broadcast nationally on PBS in May 2011 and has been pre-screened at locations around the country from New York to Denver to Los Angeles. The movie is receiving rave reviews and Mr. Armstrong will be a featured panelist at well-publicized events where he will promote his memoir Autobiography of a Freedom Rider.

David Elkind, Professor of Child Study at Tufts University, is the author of many books, including The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon.