In Stupidity and Tears, renowned educator and National Book Award winner Herbert Kohl offers us a thoughtful and ultimately optimistic meditation on the forces that conspire to keep teachers and students stupid-i.e., frustrated and unable to excel in an education system that is clearly failing them.

Among the topics explored by Kohl are the pressures of standards based assessments and harrowing sink-or-swim policies, the pain teachers feel when asked to teach against their pedagogical conscience, the development of a capacity to sense how students perceive the world, and the importance of hope and creativity in strengthening the social imagination of students and teachers.

A rousing call for common sense in the face of dwindling budgets, crippling state mandates, and injudicious politics, Stupidity and Tears is vintage Kohl-incisive, funny, reflective, profound . . . a provocation to educators to better teach all our children (Norman Fruchter, NYU Institute of Education and Social Policy).