Blackboard
A Personal History of the Classroom
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A captivating meditation on education from the author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop
In Blackboard, Lewis Buzbee looks back over a lifetime of experiences in schools and classrooms, from kindergarten to college and beyond. He offers fascinating histories of the key ideas informing educational practice over the centuries, which have shaped everything from class size to the layout of desks and chairs. Buzbee deftly weaves his own biography into this overview, approaching his subject as a student, a father, and a teacher. In so doing, he offers a moving personal testament to how he, "an average student" in danger of flunking out of high school, became the first in his family to graduate from college. He credits his success to the well-funded California public school system and bemoans the terrible price that state is paying as a result of funding being cut from today's budgets. For Buzbee, the blackboard is a precious window into the wider world, which we ignore at our peril.
"Both anecdotal and eloquent, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is a tribute to those who crave the cozy confines of a bookshop, a place to be ‘alone among others' and savor a bountiful literary buffet." —Booklist (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though this appears to be a nostalgic memoir of a baby-boomer's education from kindergarten through high school, Buzbee's (The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop) affectionate account turns out to be a subtle, sharply etched critique of contemporary public education. Framed by a visit to his former elementary school, the author effectively uses the physical details of the classroom to reveal what's increasingly missing from the educational experience. The blackboard, specifically, offers Buzbee an opportunity to defend classical teaching methods that required collective focus, and provided eureka moments as repetition led to awareness. As Buzbee progressed into high school, the social experience of school, not grades, became increasingly important, and upon the death of his father, it became vital. Teachers refused to let him off the hook, demanded the best from him, and offered lessons on perseverance. Deeply affectionate toward teachers, harshly critical of budget cuts, the book offers an eloquent, important reminder (which in a perfect world would inform policy) about the nature of school.
