A Passion for Learning

In his engaging new book, Philip Cusick puts the personal back into education by examining the educational experiences of seven eminent Americans - Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Eleanor Roosevelt, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Dorothy Day. Devoting a chapter to each, Cusick describes what they learned, how they learned, what they called their education, and how they used education to establish their place in the world. More than providing just a series of personal histories, Cusick argues that the discourse about education has turned into a discourse about educational institutions. But his descriptions show that one can talk about education without talking about schools, talk about learning without talking about the state curriculum, talk about achievement without talking about test scores, and talk about accountability without talking about teacher preparation.