"Rarely have I come across a book that so quickly provoked me to re--examine my own classroom behavior. There is no place to hide in this careful scrutiny of the teacher as crucial player in the daily morality tale that becomes the story of school life.

"Jackson, Boostrom, and Hansen capture the ways in which classroom communities shape the hearts and minds of students and teachers alike in as full-bodied a fashion as Jackson's Life in Classrooms first recorded the pulse and passions of school life. The Moral Life of Schools is powerful reading for anyone concerned with the aims of education, with the inner lives of teachers and children, and with the most important foundations of our society-- our ways of learning to live together."--Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education, Teachers College, Columbia University