title: Curriculum on the Edge of Survival: How Schools Fail to Prepare Students for Membership in a Democracy
author:  Daniel A. Heller 
description: Dan Heller provides a thought provoking commentary on the direction of America's schools. His advocacy for helping learners develop habits of caring, involvement, curiosity and commitment will strike a responsive chord in the hearts and minds of dedicated educators everywhere. Dan's work is a sensitive and centering approach to meeting the needs of our country's children as they move through today's broken educational system. (Joan Burkhard, executive director of Riverbrook Residence, Inc.)<br /><br />Dan Heller is an experienced educator. He has done it all from teaching, to administration, to instructional district-level leadership. By the virtue of his broad success in the multiple arenas of our profession, he has earned the right to be called a leader in the profession. We need more 'leaders' in teaching andin particularwe need to hear from seasoned expert educators who can weigh in on the inter-relationships between practice and policy. I admire Dan's effort in this regard. He is attempting to help teachers and other educators envision a practice that both addresses the mandates we face yet does so with integrity. [He] strives to articulate modes of approaching the thorny predicaments of practice through a system that celebrates thinking, moral engagement, and holistic conceptions of children living in an ecology. (Sam Intrator Ph.D, Professor of Education and Child Study, Smith College)<br /><br />Dan Heller's thoughtful analysis of the purpose of learning and his impassioned call for a reconceptualization of our educational system are intriguing and timely. In this well-written and compelling book, he invites all of us to re-dedicate our teaching and to make our classrooms more vibrant, more relevant, and more humane. (Leila Christenbury, professor, English Education, Virginia Commonwealth University)<br /><br />Heller's four prongs of preparation for participation in a democracykindness, thinking, problem-solving, and communicationsexemplify the 'less is more' approach to education. Rather than creating automatons with standard-issue knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors, curricula designed with these four tenets would promote actors/agents in the world who would question, take risks, reflect, and consider context, complexity, and connectedness. Such students/citizens would engage in relationships with their learning/living . . . and yes, relationships can be messy. With a populace grounded in these qualities, however, we might have a shot at practicing true democracy. (KD Maynard, director of advising at UMASS)
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
  * * *
  
  Democracy and Education
  
  
  Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
  
  Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
  
  Chapter Three: Education as Direction
  
  Chapter Four: Education as Growth
  
  [Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal
  
  
  Discipline
  
  [Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and
  
  
  Progressive
  
  [Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in
  
  
  Education
  
  [Chapter Eight: Aims in
  Education](Democracy%20and%20Education_split_001.html#filepos254788)
  
  [Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social
  
  
  Efficiency as Aims
  
  [Chapter Ten: Interest and
  Discipline](Democracy%20and%20Education_split_001.html#filepos316117)
  
  [Chapter Eleven: Experience and
  Thinking](Democracy%20and%20Education_split_001.html#filepos353064)
  
  [Chapter Twelve: Thinking in
  Education](Democracy%20and%20Education_split_002.html#filepos386177)
  
  [Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
  ](Democracy%20and%20Education_split_002.html#filepos416648)
  
  [Chapter F