A b e c e d a r i a n

His magnum opus The Lives of Children is to progressive education what "Night in Tunisia" was to the bebop and jazz tradition: a watershed. It helped to redefine and contextualize the work of progressive education in the cities of America. His chronicle and documentation of the experience and process of starting an alternative school for urban children (the First Street School) is a lyrical testimony to progressive ideals in the service of all children. Its place in the canon that resists stupidity (see Jules Henry and Herb Kohl) is bound next to Goodman's Growing up Absurd, Kohl's 36 Children and Sylvia Ashton Warner's Teacher.