What do you think?
Rate this book
Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World: An Invitation
This book is an invitation to become one of those passionate and transformative teachers, someone who can join with others to rescue teaching from the heavy hand of the test-obsessed technocrats, and change the world--or, at the very least, change the people who will change the world.
How do we see our schools and the project of education? Is this the best we can do? What would we like our schools to become? How might we get there? In this provocative book, Bill Ayers invites us to dream of schools in which each child "is of infinite and incalculable value." Blending personal anecdotes with critique of the state of education, this beautifully written little book is filled with big ideas that explore the challenges and opportunities for an education system that desperately needs repair.
Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World is an urgent call to action and a plan to help educators stretch toward something new and dramatically better--schools that are more joyful and more just, more balanced and more guided by the power of love.
Book Features:
Promotes meaningful discussions in teacher education courses. Addresses problems with our current education system and how they came to be. Advocates, with illustrations, for schooling that promotes critical thinking and engaged learning. Critiques school reform efforts, such as high-stakes testing, curriculum standardization, and dated performance metrics. Urges teachers to see students as full and equal human beings with agency and capacity. Offers 21 "gestures" toward the kind of schools all children and youth deserve.
How do we see our schools and the project of education? Is this the best we can do? What would we like our schools to become? How might we get there? In this provocative book, Bill Ayers invites us to dream of schools in which each child "is of infinite and incalculable value." Blending personal anecdotes with critique of the state of education, this beautifully written little book is filled with big ideas that explore the challenges and opportunities for an education system that desperately needs repair.
Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World is an urgent call to action and a plan to help educators stretch toward something new and dramatically better--schools that are more joyful and more just, more balanced and more guided by the power of love.
Book Features:
Promotes meaningful discussions in teacher education courses. Addresses problems with our current education system and how they came to be. Advocates, with illustrations, for schooling that promotes critical thinking and engaged learning. Critiques school reform efforts, such as high-stakes testing, curriculum standardization, and dated performance metrics. Urges teachers to see students as full and equal human beings with agency and capacity. Offers 21 "gestures" toward the kind of schools all children and youth deserve.
- GenresEducationSocial Justice
112 pages, Paperback
Published April 8, 2016
About the author
William Ayers
72 books23 followersWilliam Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), education activist, and bestselling author of Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom (with Rick Ayers), To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, Third Edition, and To Teach: The Journey, in Comics (with Ryan Alexander-Tanner).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 25, 2022
Whose facts am I teaching?
One thing that compulsory education failed to teach me is how to ask questions. For over a decade, I was busy with the “banking” education to get rid of all the perfunctory standardized tests just because that is the job of being a student. Was there any joy in doing so? But it did not matter because no one cared about joy or happiness, only competition after competition. My best friend from junior high secretly saw me as a rival and always kept an eye on my testing scores. We did not talk for over three years after heading to different high schools, and one day after graduating from high school she texted me and asked for my college entrance exam scores. That was our last word change and we have not talked since then.
Pathetic. See what educational systems have done to us?
Then one day, things changed imperceptibly. I started learning for myself and looking forward to new courses. One of the reasons was that I had more freedom to choose the classes instead of being forced to choose. I could finally choose literature over science and mathematics and had a limited freedom to create my own schedule and learn at my own pace. It was a cognition development in terms of discovering myself and exploring the surroundings. After all the years of learning by rote, I finally found something that could motivate me - standing on the shoulders of giants, I looked up from the textbooks and immersed myself in the real world, which is different from the one that was described by the authorities. The human mind was finally unleashed, including the imperfection, contradictory, self-doubt, and some messy parts of me that I am not ashamed to hide or cover. When I stopped learning those so-called “facts” that needed to be highlighted because they will be tested, I turned myself into my own mind and cared about myself as a complex and self-contradictory individual.
Now I have become a teacher and I am determined to teach my students anything I know but facts. When they complained about their history curriculum and how it “does not make sense”, I told them, “Think about who made the curriculum and what messages they tried to deliver to you”. We were talking about the movie Slumdog Millionaire, and my opinion to my students is “do not let school put shackles on your education and strangle all the possibilities you will experience outside those walls”. Most of the time, learning happens outside our classroom.
Teaching is a learning process; I am the teacher, but I do not have the absolute answers or unshakeable authority to carry my students to where they want to go. I am there to go with them, watch them fall, and sometimes I fall with them. I teach you how to talk about your feelings in Chinese, and you teach me how to make Tik Tok videos together. You vent about how there is no freedom in school, and I remind you that sometimes you need to look inside yourself to ignite the sparkles of freedom. I will do (almost) anything for my students, but one thing I am not, and not capable of doing, is to teach you the facts and stuff them into your brain. Like my teachers used to do to us - “don’t ask why, just remember these because they will be in your test”.
I do ask “why” a lot in class. Why are you happy? Why are you annoyed? Why do you prefer individual work to group work? Why are you on your phone? Why do you not like chemistry class? Why do you not like school? Why Asian Americans are so underrepresented in history? Sorry kids, I do not have answers of many things, but I want you to think harder, put down your cell phone, and go out there to explore, experience, embrace, search, resist, and face all the contradictions in the world. Learn from the world, not about the world.
Education is not press your head on the books and recite word by word, line by line; education is not seeing one side of the story and laminate it to store it on the shelf; education is not obeying to the rules, playing along the standardized tests and framing the straight-A report card on the wall; education is not about categorizing people so that they play their functions to meet the needs of societies; education is not building a scarecrow in the hallway to assign detention to students who are tardy.
Education is learning, living, human being, arguing, contradiction, searching, falling, fighting, bravery, encouragement, disagreement, resistance, questioning, cooperation, expressing, creating, pursuing, joy, hope, justice, and happiness.
Education is love. And it is everything we breathe and live.
One thing that compulsory education failed to teach me is how to ask questions. For over a decade, I was busy with the “banking” education to get rid of all the perfunctory standardized tests just because that is the job of being a student. Was there any joy in doing so? But it did not matter because no one cared about joy or happiness, only competition after competition. My best friend from junior high secretly saw me as a rival and always kept an eye on my testing scores. We did not talk for over three years after heading to different high schools, and one day after graduating from high school she texted me and asked for my college entrance exam scores. That was our last word change and we have not talked since then.
Pathetic. See what educational systems have done to us?
Then one day, things changed imperceptibly. I started learning for myself and looking forward to new courses. One of the reasons was that I had more freedom to choose the classes instead of being forced to choose. I could finally choose literature over science and mathematics and had a limited freedom to create my own schedule and learn at my own pace. It was a cognition development in terms of discovering myself and exploring the surroundings. After all the years of learning by rote, I finally found something that could motivate me - standing on the shoulders of giants, I looked up from the textbooks and immersed myself in the real world, which is different from the one that was described by the authorities. The human mind was finally unleashed, including the imperfection, contradictory, self-doubt, and some messy parts of me that I am not ashamed to hide or cover. When I stopped learning those so-called “facts” that needed to be highlighted because they will be tested, I turned myself into my own mind and cared about myself as a complex and self-contradictory individual.
Now I have become a teacher and I am determined to teach my students anything I know but facts. When they complained about their history curriculum and how it “does not make sense”, I told them, “Think about who made the curriculum and what messages they tried to deliver to you”. We were talking about the movie Slumdog Millionaire, and my opinion to my students is “do not let school put shackles on your education and strangle all the possibilities you will experience outside those walls”. Most of the time, learning happens outside our classroom.
Teaching is a learning process; I am the teacher, but I do not have the absolute answers or unshakeable authority to carry my students to where they want to go. I am there to go with them, watch them fall, and sometimes I fall with them. I teach you how to talk about your feelings in Chinese, and you teach me how to make Tik Tok videos together. You vent about how there is no freedom in school, and I remind you that sometimes you need to look inside yourself to ignite the sparkles of freedom. I will do (almost) anything for my students, but one thing I am not, and not capable of doing, is to teach you the facts and stuff them into your brain. Like my teachers used to do to us - “don’t ask why, just remember these because they will be in your test”.
I do ask “why” a lot in class. Why are you happy? Why are you annoyed? Why do you prefer individual work to group work? Why are you on your phone? Why do you not like chemistry class? Why do you not like school? Why Asian Americans are so underrepresented in history? Sorry kids, I do not have answers of many things, but I want you to think harder, put down your cell phone, and go out there to explore, experience, embrace, search, resist, and face all the contradictions in the world. Learn from the world, not about the world.
Education is not press your head on the books and recite word by word, line by line; education is not seeing one side of the story and laminate it to store it on the shelf; education is not obeying to the rules, playing along the standardized tests and framing the straight-A report card on the wall; education is not about categorizing people so that they play their functions to meet the needs of societies; education is not building a scarecrow in the hallway to assign detention to students who are tardy.
Education is learning, living, human being, arguing, contradiction, searching, falling, fighting, bravery, encouragement, disagreement, resistance, questioning, cooperation, expressing, creating, pursuing, joy, hope, justice, and happiness.
Education is love. And it is everything we breathe and live.
January 29, 2018
"Children and youth are living life itself; they are not experiencing half-a-life in preparation for some real life to be stepped into some day. And the best preparation for a meaningful future life is living a meaningful present life, right here, right now. Happiness leads to more happiness; confidence builds more confidence. In the schools we need, learning is not a bitter medicine hurriedly swallowed on someone else's promise that it will be good for you someday."
Ayers provides suggestions on how to teach for social justice, bringing in stories (albeit too few, in my opinion) of how educators have exemplified such teaching. It is heartening to know that there are such educators out there, even if they are still too few.
Ayers provides suggestions on how to teach for social justice, bringing in stories (albeit too few, in my opinion) of how educators have exemplified such teaching. It is heartening to know that there are such educators out there, even if they are still too few.
Currently Reading
January 20, 2022378.19829 D3521 2017
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews