Meier’s book is about taking this vision of education and human possibility seriously chapter by chapter. Meier argues for innovation for school choice as a strategy for change, small schools to engage students, teachers, and parents working with each other in ways that would be impossible in larger schools. Beyond these innovations, she also encourages mutual respect among teachers, students, administrators, and parents as a prerequisite for collaboration and collective school ownership.

Meier's book is the story of how the overhaul of the U.S. public education system might be accomplished with a bit of imagination, creativity, determination, and a healthy dose of common sense. As she acknowledges in her preface,

Meier holds the firm belief that students and teachers should be able to deal directly with each other as human beings, and that can only be accomplished when the school, in essence, is its own community. "Small school size is not only a good idea but an absolute prerequisite for qualitative change in deep seated habits, not just rhetoric" (p. 107).

Some of Deborah Meier's innovative approaches to education seem almost commonplace today interdisciplinary learning in small groups, real lessons that use the city as the classroom (a curriculum that includes such things such as mapping Manhattan or testing the water quality of the East River) and public "exhibitions" to demonstrate students' learning, rather than reliance on multiple-choice, standardized tests. Perhaps the best known of her ideas is that a school, to be effective, cannot be large.

Meier has written an engaging, informative account of the two decades she spent pioneering, experimenting with, and ultimately creating a highly successful educational program. This collection of her writings includes journal entries, articles, and memos that summarize her struggle to create and manage great inner-city schools. Most of all, however, Meier's book is a wake-up call to citizens and educators--about taking education seriously and accepting mutual responsibility for the future of the next generation.

As Meier notes, we can redesign what are, after all, merely brick and mortar buildings into campuses composed not only of many different schools, but of schools for children of different ages and, if we are imaginative enough, other kinds of institutions that would live nicely side-by-side with the young. We could surround our children with true livi

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