9 Eye-Opening Books About Education

Cameron Wyllie’s “warm and witty memoir” (Sunday Times) recalls his remarkable four-decade career as a teacher, culminating in his appointment as principal of Edinburgh’s prestigious George Heriot’s School. The book is packed full of humorous anecdotes about his life in education, but Wyllie proves equally adept in discussing more heavyweight topics such as drugs, sex education and effective parenting.

First published in the 1990s, the inspiration for the title of this fascinating look into New York’s Lexington School for the Deaf is taken from American Sign Language, in which “train go sorry” means “missing the boat”. 

Leah Hager Cohen was not deaf but, as her father was the school’s superintendent, grew up on the Lexington campus and became fluent in ASL. This makes her uniquely placed to explore the ways in which the school attempted to bridge the gap between the deaf and hearing communities. Praised by The New York Times as “a brilliant narrative of deaf culture”, the author combines a sensitive portrait of day-to-day life in the school with a keen analysis of the issues faced by the deaf community in the modern world.

The third in a series of memoirs by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Frank McCourt, Teacher Man charts his 30-year career as an English teacher in various New York public high schools. Here he honed his considerable skills as a storyteller to deal with the challenge of communicating his subject to sometimes the most reluctant of students, which, in turn, led to his highly successful later career as a bestselling author. McCourt’s ability as a consummate storyteller is readily apparent in Teacher Man, which won praise from the Los Angeles Times as “an enthralling work of autobiographical storytelling”. 

Rita Kramer brings the story of the early 20th-century educator, Maria Montessori, vividly to life in this fascinating biography. Montessori is best known today as the pioneer of the progressive teaching method that bears her name, which encourages young children to develop their own natural creativity and intelligence through self-directed activity and hands-on learning. However, the innovative educationalist was also a trailblazer in other ways. She was one of the first Italian women to graduate from medical school back in the 1890s and remained a passionate campaigner for women’s rights throughout her life.

First published in 1976, Rita Kramer’s detailed account takes a refreshing look at Montessori’s life and career, including plenty of fascinating insight into the private woman behind the public figure who made such game-changing contributions to educational and social reform. 

Renowned as one of the world’s most respected authorities on McCarthyism, Ellen Schrecker’s work on modern American university history is equally highly regarded. Here, in The Lost Promise, she provides enlightening insight into the turbulent protests that rocked American university campuses during the 1960s and their far-reaching consequences for US society and culture. 

Schrecker’s complex investigation is unique in not focusing purely on student protests, but also delving deep into the part played in events by faculty members and administrators. Library Journal describes The Lost Promise as “required reading for anyone eager to understand the complex forces shaping American higher education”.

Brendan Halpin’s refreshingly honest and irreverent memoir details his transformation from an idealistic new recruit to hard-bitten veteran during a nine-year stint as a high school teacher in and around Boston during the 1990s. In adopting this humorous warts-and-all approach, Halpin gives his reader a fascinating glimpse into what life as a teacher is really like and provides interesting insight into some common pitfalls encountered within the education system.

A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit focuses on the extraordinary life, career and vision of the influential early 20th-century educator and social activist, Mary McLeod Bethune. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Bethune is rightly acclaimed today as a pioneering campaigner in the fields of racial and gender equality. In 1904, she founded her first college for African American girls in Daytona with just six pupils. Today this has evolved into Bethune-Cookman University, the alma mater of Noliwe Rooks’ own grandmother.

Rooks interweaves her thoroughly engrossing account of Bethune’s remarkable achievements against all odds with her own family’s experiences, thus allowing her to reflect on the visionary campaigner’s continuing legacy. Kirkus Reviews describes the book as “a fine introduction to Bethune’s philosophy, as well as a thoughtful primer for today’s activists”.

In 1969, Yale University announced that it was to open its campus to female students for the first time. The move proved far from universally popular at the nearly 300-year-old Ivy League institution, but it was widely hailed as a landmark decision in the bid to achieve gender equality in education.

Focusing particularly on the experiences of five women, Anne Gardiner Perkins’ Yale Needs Women provides a riveting account of the challenges encountered by those first female undergraduates during the difficult early years of co-education at Yale. The author also excels at relating the story of these early feminists within the wider context of other events on campus, including the era’s civil rights and anti-war protest movements.

Formerly a teacher at an inner-city school in London, Lucy Crehan travelled round the globe to visit schools in countries that are regularly associated with the world’s top-performing educational systems. Cleverlands tells the story of her experiences in countries like Finland, Canada and Singapore, as well as revealing how the history and culture of each place has shaped its views on education. Crehan also provides some interesting discussion points as to what her findings reveal about best practice policies in general. 

This “audacious and important” book (Prospect) will appeal to those in the teaching profession but also works equally well as a travelogue with an education slant.