Gerald Grant's classic look at how one school evolved from the 1950s through
the mid 1980s is a must read for anyone thinking about education in America. Grant's
ideas on "making a world" for students provide an inspiring vision for public
schools.
"The World We Created at Hamilton High is beautifully written, carefully researched, and continually insightful. With
searing honesty Gerald Grant portrays the dilemmas of the schools today, especially
those conditions that cause public schools to retreat behind a facade of bureaucratic
legalism and to abandon the attempt to forge a sense of community. By looking
closely and sensitively at one school, Grant places the policy debates and history
of the past thirty-five years under his microscope. He has succeeded in writing
a brilliant and provocative book." --Diane Ravitch
"Gerald Grant has written the benchmark book of the 1980s ... The World We Created at Hamilton High has an authenticity and a respect for the complexity of life in schools that
has rarely been equaled in our professional literature." --Kevin Ryan, Phi Delta Kappan
"Grant's reconstruction of the experiences of the people at Hamilton High and
his remarkable attempt to bring those experiences to life make for compelling
reading." --Pamela B. Johnson, The American School Board Journal
"[A] graceful, human, engaging narrative of what happened to an American high
school during successive decades of optimism, integration, student upstarting
and declining results. [It] has heart and mind ... Here is a survey course in
what went wrong when everybody but teachers claimed to know best ... A superb
case history of what is probably the noblest American dream--education for everybody."
--Art Seidenbaum, Los Angeles Times
The World We Created at Hamilton High