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	ask the experts herbert kohl

Herbert Kohl attended the Bronx High School of Science and studied philosophy and mathematics at Harvard, Oxford, and Columbia University. After getting a BA at Harvard, spending a year as a Henry Fellow at University College, Oxford, and another year as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Columbia he became a sixth grade teacher in the New York City public schools which was a childhood dream.

He has been teaching and writing for over forty years. During that time he has taught every grade from kindergarten through graduate school. His career as a teacher began in 1962 in Harlem where he taught sixth grade. From 1962 to 1968 he also ran a storefront school for junior high and high school students, worked as curriculum coordinator for the Parent Board of the I.S. 201 Community School District, and was founder and first director of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative.

In 1964 his first book, The Age of Complexity, about analytic and existential philosophy, was published. His first writings on education, Teaching the Unteachable, The Language and Education of the Deaf, 36 Children , and The Open Classroom were published from 1965 to 1967.

Recently he was a Senior Fellow at the Open Society Institute, a part of the Soros Foundations Network. Currently he is Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco.

Among his books are: Basic Skills, Growing Minds, Making Theater, The Question is College, From Archetype to Zeitgeist, I Won't Learn from You, Should We Burn Barbar? ,The Discipline of Hope., and A Grain of Poetry. He also co-authored Pack Band and Colony with Judith Kohl and with Judith Kohl and Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Center, he co-authored The Long Haul which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His latest book is Stupidity and Tears.

At the center of his teaching and writing has been caring school reform and a commitment to equity and justice.