ABSTRACT
One way of understanding the effort which this book represents is to situate it between the left and the right in the literature on school reform. The categories of left and right are themselves slippery categories. In general the critics on the left accuse the schools of being politically naive, or oppressive, or simply unconscious of reflecting the social contradictions inherent in the present political-economic order. The critics on the right accuse the schools of not attending to the passing on of the culture, of not developing respect for authority, of not nurturing habits of hard work, self restraint and traditional virtues associated in the past with 'character'.1
