Educating Ruby

With the election looming education is a key topic - teachers, parents, employers need to stand up and have their say on the future of education. Everyone knows schools need rethinking - our political and educational worlds teem with critiques and proposals. But few speak from the heart: from the perspectives and concerns of teachers, children and families as human beings (rather than as deliverers or recipients of the curriculum). For many people, Willy Russell's Educating Rita offered a radical insight into the then class-ridden world of universities. In Educating Ruby, acclaimed thought-leaders Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas imagine how school life could be more fulfilling for a latter-day Rita, now named Ruby. Bill and Guy show how teachers, parents and grandparents can cultivate confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment and craftsmanship in children, at the same time as helping them to achieve well in public examinations. Educating Ruby is a powerful call to action for everyone who cares about education in an uncertain world. It shows, unequivocally, that schools can get the right results in the right way, so that the Rubys of tomorrow will emerge from their time at school able to talk with honest pleasure and reflective optimism about their schooling.