Displaying the same passion he exhibited in The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, his love letter to bookstores, Lewis Buzbee here melds a fond memoir of his own education with snapshots of the history of American pedagogy. The result, he hopes, will stimulate readers to act in the interest of rescuing an educational system that, he passionately argues, is failing in its essential mission.
Buzbee organizes his book around a chronological account of his life as a student, marked by teachers and classrooms that were, in the main, "only exceptional in that they were exceptionally ordinary." The chapters that describe his years at Bagby Elementary School in San Jose, Calif., in the 1960s are the strongest (his college and graduate-school years correspondingly the weakest), as he convincingly evokes the sights, sounds and smells of that educational ecosystem. He's a capable guide whose observant prose is well suited to the task of stimulating our own memories.
Among the most affecting passages are his tributes to standout teachers, such as his eighth-grade civics teacher, Mrs. Tullis; she became a mentor who, though "ill paid for her efforts, freely offered her space and time." Blackboard's epilogue outlines the steep decline of the California school system based on what Buzbee (who lives in San Francisco and sends his daughter to private school) argues is "the lack of the public's will to fund schools adequately." "Raise my taxes!" he demands. One needn't subscribe to his agenda to appreciate the lasting value of the kind of education he portrays with affection and insight in this appealing book. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer