THIS BOOK IS ABOUT SCHOOLS

This is a stimulating sampler drawn from This Magazine Is About Schools, a Canadian publication representing what is being thought, said and done to encourage a more fluid, more individually constructive and collectively oriented way of teaching the young, or rather permitting them to learn. There is an introduction by Herbert Kohl and the pieces have a tremendous range: from Wilfred Pelletier's ""Childhood in an Indian Village"" and its learning situation for people, to the magazine editor Sarah Spinks' ""Sugar 'n Spice"" on what little girls are made to feel about their roles, to Gaff Ashby's discussion of the rigid sexual and social expectations of her own youth. Mr. Repo watches his own children watch TV and in another piece discusses the contradictions in what is euphemistically called sex education: various types of the more forward-moving, newer schools are viewed including Warrendale, for the emotionally disturbed: a boy who grew up in prison speaks -- so does the patient from a ward for the ""criminally insane."" There's a book review of Edgar Friedenberg who occasions many referrals and contributes a piece here along with McLuhan, Staughton Lynd, and that opponent of ""psychiatric fascism,"" the firebrand Dr. Thomas Szasz. . . . A slipstream of contemporary, revisionist insights, ideas and values which is altogether in touch.