Best known for his paean to self-sufficiency, Living the Good Life,
which became a bestseller that Newsweek called an underground bible
for the city-weary, Scott Nearing was also a high-profile public
advocate for education reform at the start of the Progressive era.
Lamenting that public schools had failed to keep up with societal
changes, Nearing traveled the country during the early decades of the
twentieth century, documenting schools that had abandoned a traditional
authoritarian stance in favor of child-centered practice. Now the
vignettes, interviews, and speculations on school restructuring,
curriculum development, and educational reform that he offered in The
New Education a century ago are relevant once again.