A perennial challenge for educators, writes Nessel, is one that Plato addressed in
The Republic:
"how to avoid simply feeding students information and instead get them to use their innate capacities and think for themselves." The solution, Nessel says, is not to impose a specific curriculum or method of instruction on everyone, but to think creatively about the individual situations of students, in order to improve conditions for learning. In this book, she presents a range of perspectives on schools, teaching and learning from writers as diverse as Leo Tolstoy, Howard Gardner and Elaine Landau - all concerned with the development of inquiring minds and critical thinking abilities.