The purpose of this book is to identify schooling goals and suggest what form of schooling is needed to achieve them. Although schools manage to care for children and give them a solid social, cultural, and intellectual grounding they also massively deprive children of intellectual and cultural stimulation and enormously distort children's perception of social and political reality. Reconciling these assessments (schools' solid record of achievement versus their scandalous performance) hinges on recognizing the close link between school and society. This book calls for a new vision of school and society's goal--to promote human well-being as equitably as possible throughout society and around the world. While not neglecting traditional basics, schools must stress personal and social education. Schools should advocate certain outlooks and attitudes and model them for students. To pursue equality and build community, students should study a largely common curriculum in nonselective schools and heterogeneous classes. Part 1 of the book focuses on selected key goals and pedagogical issues and four major interest groups (students, teachers, parents, and society). Part 2 concentrates on specific problem areas: compulsion, indoctrination, and questions related to religion, race, ethnicity, and class. Part 3, presenting new curriculum priorities, discusses moral and values education, religious and spiritual education, political education, and global education. The book contains numerous chapter references and an index. (MLH)