Education Challenge

This is a challenge for book lovers to read 4 books during 2008 (From February 5th to Xmas day - December 25th) about the education crisis. These should be non-fiction (TRUE) stories of schools that bucked the system to help their students. Most of these stories will come out of the USA. From the inner city school districts, and usually they involve the poor, the minorities and most often, the African-Americans, who have been marginalised by the education system.

Such examples include
Freedom Writers Diary
Lean On Me (this is based on a true story but there doesnt seem to be a book out yet)
And Still We Rise
Tested & Not Much, Just Chillin' By Linda Perlstein

I will also allow authors such as John Caldwell Holt - who wrote How Children Fail and How Children Learn. Also John Taylor Gatto who wrote: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992); The Exhausted School (1993); A Different Kind of Teacher (2000); and The Underground History Of American Education (2001)

Right now I am reading a Book called Cross-X - about a High School debate team in Kansas City that rose above poverty and the education system and helped themselves to get to college.

No Sweet Valley High or Sweet Valley University novels allowed. No Brent-Dyer, Enid Blyton and Angela Brazil school stories (novels) allowed. I've read them all.

One of the reasons I am interested in this, is because of this page, I read some months ago, and the more I hear about schools in crisis, the more I feel that I need to do something. Even if it is just in a small way. Most readers will be American, so this is for you. For those of you who are not in USA, if you cant find any of the above mentioned American books, then any true stories about the education crisis in your country will be fine. One last thing. Crossovers - as always - are allowed. Have fun.