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:	9781620970164
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	02/03/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	372 KB

About the Author

Susan Engel is a professor of developmental 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, Context is Everything, Real Kids, and Red Flags or Red Herrings. She lives in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.
Susan Engel is a professor of developmental 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, Context is Everything, Real Kids, and Red Flags or Red Herrings. She lives in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.

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 171

Afterword 197

Notes 201

Index 209

Editorial Reviews

"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"
—Publishers Weekly

"A gem of a book…so many good anecdotes to demonstrate her points, based on her many years of work as a teacher of teachers, time spent in school, and in raising children."
—Deborah Meier

"In this startlingly timely book on education in the United States, Susan Engel critiques the current monetized version of “return on investment” and challenges us to focus on the right returns from the right investments."
—Howard Gardner

"A most enjoyable and provocative read, The End of the Rainbow invites readers to consider the purpose of schooling. Through anecdote and the use of scientific research, Engel makes the argument that schools aim for productivity rather than happiness, with the latter falling by the wayside."
—Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, author of How Babies Talk, Einstein Never Used Flash Cards, and A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool

"What, in our hearts, do we wish for our children, and how can schools be designed to help make those wishes come true? These are the most fundamental questions we can ask when thinking about schooling, and in this book Susan Engel combines good sense and empirical research to help us think about them."
—Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life

From the Publisher