The Classroom

What goes on in a classroom? can mean "Are teachers imparting knowledge that will raise test scores?" or it can mean much more. In this series of essays, Block addresses the nature of the classroom as a place for encounter and engagements: with curriculum materials and books, between teachers and students, and with the self.

"This book portrays the wisdom of a journeyer; one who, with his students, has traveled the literature of great western writers, of the Bible, the Torah, and plunged into the depths of self. Learning is too superficial a word to describe this journey; it is one of appreciating the 'sacredness of study,' of reading with engagement, insight, questioning, and of experiencing Life. This is education in all its full, rich, existential glory." - William. E. Doll, Jr., Visiting Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada

"Block accomplishes the complex yet crucial challenge of integrating curriculum studies and teacher education. In characteristic style and language that are elegant, poetic, poignant, and prophetic, he offers readers a glimpse into the classroom but not the classroom we are expecting to see. Block's greatest accomplishment is posing questions and sitting with ambiguities of what it means to be a teacher, thereby uncovering the great secret of classrooms and schools: that they themselves are places not of answers and certainty but of questions and ambiguity." - Reta Ugena Whitlock, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Gender and Women's Studies, Kennesaw State University, USA

"Block's book is both a lamentation and a love affair exposed for all to see. As I enter the classroom yet again this year, The Classroom provides what he says we seek some peace and refuge from the world's turmoil. But his writing does this by facing that turmoil. His great gift as a writer is to make it more bearable by not turning away." - David Jardine, Professor of Education, University of Calgary, Canada

Author Alan A. Block: Alan A. Block is Professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, USA. Afterword by William F. Pinar: William F. Pinar is Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Canada.