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THE SHORT BUS

Name: THE SHORT BUS
Author: Jonathan Mooney
ISBN: 978-0-8050-7427-7

A JOURNEY BEYOND NORMAL

by Jonathan Mooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 29, 2007

The author speaks on these issues across the country, and his text occasionally sounds like a lecture. Nonetheless, this...

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An advocate for the rights of people with learning, physical or emotional disabilities takes a road trip in the vehicle that symbolizes the way we segregate those who are different.

Labeled as learning disabled in the third grade (he had attention deficit disorder and dyslexia), Mooney grew up riding the “short school bus…once used to take kids with disabilities to special ed programs.” He was a special-ed success story: Though unable to read until age12, he later graduated with honors in English from Brown University. But he didn’t want to be seen as someone who had “overcome” his disability and become “normal”; he traveled cross-country in one of those little yellow buses to declare his solidarity with members of the minority who ride in them and to offer some lessons for the rest of us. Learning disabled Brent lobbed paintballs at him in Albuquerque; deaf-blind Ashley cussed him out in sign language in Richmond. He met Cookie, a big guy who wore a blonde wig and a pink robe; sweet Katie, who had Down syndrome; bipolar Sara; and Asperger Jeff. All, Mooney insists, are singular people—though every one of them addresses him as “dude” and uses “man” as a form of conversational punctuation. (They’re also all given, at least in his account, to pronouncing wise aphorisms they’re unable to clarify.) As well as describing trips to Graceland and Burning Man, Mooney provides some social history of the efforts through eugenics and pseudoscience to “fix” or to set apart people who may be different. No one is precisely normal, he reminds us; that’s a statistical concept and a social construct.

The author speaks on these issues across the country, and his text occasionally sounds like a lecture. Nonetheless, this offers a heartfelt rebuke to rigid definitions of normality.

Pub Date: June 29, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-8050-7427-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007

Categories:

EDUCATION

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FOR THE CHILDREN

LESSONS FROM A VISIONARY PRINCIPAL

by Madeline Cartwright & Michael D’Orso ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1993

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A first-person account of how a nuclear-powered principal saved a Philadelphia school in a collapsing inner-city neighborhood. Cartwright—the youngest of 13 children who were so poor that they often went without shoes—worked her way through college as a maid, began to teach, and then moved up through the Philadelphia school system, eventually becoming principal of the James G. Blaine Elementary School in Strawberry Mansion (whose pretty name belied its desolate neighborhood: its students saw death and violence, and knew hunger, cold, and desperation). Cartwright set out to make the school a safe and joyous refuge for learning; one of her first acts was to take off her shoes and stockings, drop to her knees, and scrub the foul-smelling floor of the children's bathroom (many similiarly dramatic incidents dot the text, coauthored with Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reporter d'Orso). Cartwright defied or circumvented the school establishment regularly—for example, by insisting that the administering of achievement tests be as clean as the bathroom floor. As a result, the school's achievement scores dropped at first, but then began to climb as the children mastered the concepts and not simply the answers, which had been readily available during the previous school regime. Cartwright was able to turn the school around because, above all, she insisted that teachers respect each child's potential; that children respect their teachers and parents; and that parents be involved in their children's education. As gripping as her school tales are those of the neighborhood's deterioration, of the start of the crack epidemic, and of the benighted efforts of reformers who annually touted new programs to revive the schools. Cartwright rejected most of these efforts and continued on her own way. Few share Cartwright's drive and courage, but her advice to make schools a better place just one step, one room, at a time may hearten all those overwhelmed by grandiose proposals for ``educational reform.''

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-385-42372-1

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993

Categories:

EDUCATION

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CREATING MINDS

AN ANATOMY OF CREATIVITY SEEN THROUGH THE LIVES OF FREUD, EINSTEIN, PICASSO, STRAVINSKY, ELIOT, GRAHAM, AND GANDHI

by Howard Gardner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 1993

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It takes chutzpah to come up with a scheme for analyzing creativity—especially in subjects already exhaustively examined. But for psychologist and MacArthur fellow Gardner (Harvard Graduate School of Education), it amounts to a natural progression from his earlier dissections of intelligence: Frames of Mind and Multiple Intelligences argued that, instead of a generalized intelligence, there are at least seven varieties (musical, logical-mathematical, visual, etc.). Here, Gardner chooses prototypes of each variety and provides capsule biographies and analyses along such themes as the child versus the adult creator, and the creator in relation to others and to the work. Gardner finds sufficient commonalities among his seven types of intelligence to provide a synthesis: an ``exemplary creator'' (E.C.). This individual (whom Gardner calls ``she'') is somewhat ``marginal'' in the social milieu, born into a reasonably comfortable family away from the creative center (Picasso and Stravinsky moved to Paris, Freud to Vienna...). There may not be much family love and affection but there may be a devoted nurse or a role model. The child is strong-minded and exhibits ability but isn't necessarily a prodigy. She moves into a decade of mastery of the domain and accomplishes a critical breakthrough that may include the affirmation of a few chosen peers (Picasso and Braque; Stravinsky and Diaghilev). Second and third breakthroughs may develop in successive decades until old age takes its toll. The E.C. retains childlike characteristics, including self- centeredness, even exploitation of others (Stravinsky's litigiousness; Picasso's sadism). E.C.s may make Faustian bargains, often leading to disastrous domestic life and parenthood. One can come up with counterexamples, and argue that there might be Western/20th-century biases at work here. But one has to hand it to Gardner for offering some provocative post-Eriksonian thoughts on creativity that are a lot more stimulating than those that measure creativity according to the ``100 uses of a safety pin'' school of thought.