Inside Today’s Elementary Schools: A Psychologist’s Perspective

Abstract

This book takes readers on a tour of a day in the life of a public elementary school in an effort to give parents and other stakeholders a sense of the realities of the classroom. The tour reveals ten worrisome things about today’s schools and considers what to do about them. Dillon emphasizes the need for future schools to be places filled with adventure and high purpose, with classrooms small enough to waste only a minimum of time. They should be free from stifling levels of bureaucracy, supervised by rotating teacher administrators rather than career managers. The book asserts that schools should be staffed by scholarly and engaged teaching professionals dedicated to helping students live a healthy adult life in a democracy rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all, furiously assessed college prep curriculum on everyone. In all, Dillon argues, schools should be places with classrooms of narrow ability ranges dedicated to teaching a coherent curriculum, all in a context of full buy-in and support from students’ families. Let’s go inside today’s elementary schools.