The 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature went to Norwegian author Knut Hamsun for his novel Growth of the Soil. It is the story of Isak, who builds a farm and a life for himself out of a tract of wilderness and little else. Isak is one durable tradesman. He makes his beginning as a shepherd and then spends a few pages meandering through farming, gardening, woodworking, and carpentry…

The Western model of schooling has few greater foes than Joel Spring. An emeritus professor at both Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Spring defines this model as the con¬ventional K-12 “educational ladder that students climb” from primary school to graduation from high school. This approach, he says, has swept around the globe, leaving in its wake…