The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness (Not Money) Would Transform Our Schools

by Susan Engel

Overview

Amid the hype of Race to the Top, online experiments such as Khan Academy, and bestselling books like The Sandbox Investment, we seem to have drawn a line that leads from nursery school along a purely economic route, with money as the final stop. But what price do we all pay for the increasingly singular focus on wage as the outcome of education? Susan Engel, a leading psychologist and educator, argues that this economic framework has had a profound impact not only on the way we think about education but also on what happens inside school buildings.

The End of the Rainbow asks what would happen if we changed the implicit goal of education and imagines how different things would be if we made happiness, rather than money, the graduation prize. Drawing on psychology, education theory, and a broad range of classroom experiences across the country, Engel offers a fascinating alternative view of what education might become: teaching children to read books for pleasure and self-expansion and encouraging collaboration. All of these new skills, she argues, would not only cultivate future success in the world of work but also would make society as a whole a better, happier place.

Accessible to parents and teachers alike, The End of the Rainbow will be the beginning of a new, more vibrant public conversation about what the future of American education should look like.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595589545
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	02/24/2015
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Susan Engel is a developmental psychologist in the Department of Psychology at Williams College, where she is also the founder and director of the Williams Program in Teaching. She is the author of four previous books, The Stories Children Tell: Making Sense of the Narratives of Childhood, Context is Everything: The Nature of Memory, Real Kids: Creating Meaning in Everyday Life, and Red Flags or Red Herrings: Predicting Who Your Child Will Become. During 2006–2007 she wrote a column on teaching for the New York Times titled Lessons. Engel has also made numerous appearances on radio and television, including on Good Morning America and The Today Show, as an expert on education and child-rearing.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Prologue 1

1 The Money Trail 11

2 How Money Impoverishes Education 39

3 Rich or Poor, It's Good to Have Money 81

4 How Happiness Enriches Schools 89

5 A Blueprint for Well-Being 135

6 What We Should Measure

Afterword 197

Notes 201

Index 209

Editorial Reviews

12/15/2014
Engel, (Red Flags or Red Herrings?) the director of the Williams Program in Teaching at Williams College, offers an incisive prescription for America’s sagging educational system. She presents her argument with classroom scenarios that neatly serve to undermine the economic mind-set that currently plagues the K–12 curriculum, arguing that the implicit goal of education should not be to create financially successful adults but to instill an appreciation of the value of an education. The system should offer enthusiastic encouragement so that students will challenge themselves in new ways and become more deeply invested in their communities. Engel demonstrates how the No Child Left Behind Act and the Race to the Top program paradoxically quash students’ underlying desire to broaden their understanding or reach beyond what is required, creating an environment where “the school is more worried about how it is doing than how the children are doing.” Restoring a sense of enjoyment to learning requires drastic changes to the tortured pedagogy of test preparation. Although Engel’s recommendations go against current orthodoxy, she enters this extremely heated public debate with a noncombative tone that is not only refreshing but will illuminate her rationale to even the staunchest supporters of standardized testing. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Susan Engel's Your Child's Path:

"The perfect antidote to the high anxiety that pervades parenting these days."
—Edward Hallowell, author of The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness

"A technically thoughtful and beautifully written book."
—Jerome S. Bruner, NYU professor of psychology and author of The Process of Education

"A liberating book."
—Roger A. Hart, professor of environmental and developmental psychology, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

"A compassionate guide for parents and educators."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Insightful…the author knows her stuff and is a wonderful storyteller."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

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