Synopses & Reviews
In the wake of the tragedy of the shootings in Littleton at Columbine High School and other killings of children by children, there is increasing recognition of the urgent need for a deep systemic reassessment of what we are teaching our children. Based on the multidisciplinary research conducted by Riane Eisler over three decades, Tomorrow's Children presents a new integrated model for education: the partnership model. This model is an outgrowth of the cultural transformation theory developed by Dr. Eisler in her classic work The Chalice and the Blade. In that book, Eisler identifies a continuum of patterns for structuring relations. At one end of the continuum is the partnership model, which embodies equity, environmental sustainability, multiculturalism, and gender-fairness. At the opposite end of the continuum is the dominator model, which has marred much of our civilization. This model emphasizes control, authoritarianism, violence, gender discrimination, and environmental destruction. Eisler also shows that we today stand at a crossroads, where a shift to the partnership end of the continuum is essential for human welfare, and possibly survival. A new kind of education system is required to effectuate this shift. Tomorrow's Children applies the partnership model to education from kindergarten to twelfth grade and beyond, providing practical guidance for educators, parents, and students. Rather than one more add-on to existing methods and curricula, it provides a systemic approach that offers a more accurate and hopeful picture of what being human means. The curriculum loom and learning tapestry Eisler presents in Tomorrow's Children integrate three primary components of teaching and learning: what Eisler calls partnership process, partnership structure, and partnership content. The book melds Eisler's research and the work of many progressive educators into a cohesive and compelling blueprint for the kind of proactive education children need to meet the challenges of the 21st century. As Nel Noddings, a noted professor of education from Stanford University, writes, "the adoption of a partnership model in both schools and the larger society is essential for human life to flourish."
Review
"Yes, yes, yes! Bold and persuasive, Eisler's plan to transform education is an education in itself. Her evolutionary insights are timely and needed for the whole-brain learning that each child deserves. Bravo, Riane, for lighting this pathway towards a child-honoring society." Raffi
Review
"Tomorrow's Children is an important and powerful manifesto a blueprint for how to take the first steps toward a saner and more humane educational system. Eisler is a creative American visionary, and her strategy to overcome dominator societies and create a world based on partnership is a loving alternative to the technocratic nonsense that often dominates the school reform debates." Michael Lerner
Review
"Tomorrow's Children is a rich legacy and practical guidebook for creating relevant education for future generations. Riane Eisler's Partnership Education model for the 21st Century is a catalyst for educational transformation which offers exceptional knowledge, skills, vision, and tools to create a better future." Angeles Arrien
Review
"Tomorrow's Children provides an inspirational, highly creative partnership model for educating ourselves and future citizens of the planet. Anyone who cares about peaceful, democratic teaching methods and a healthy, sustainable earth will find Eisler's gender-balanced examples indispensable. A book for the twenty-first century that reweaves history and culture into new partnership patterns." Carolyn Merchant
Review
"At a time when advice to 'be realistic' is heard as a call to lower one's sights and lessen one's expectations, Tomorrow's Children shows us how utopian our future could really be. Based on a real understanding of our past and present, here are realistic and realizable inpiring visions and concrete proposals which lead to a vastly improved future for all our planet's children. Riane Eisler's vision offers us real hope." Harry Brod
Review
"Out of Riane Eisler's many years of research in cultural evolution comes an educational system that is both wise and revolutionary. Partnership Education gives us an excellent model with which to analyze and create both curriculum and pedagogy in a way that addresses our deepest concerns about environmental health, social justice, and the future of our children. As a college instructor and a homeschooling parent, I am profoundly grateful to Riane Eisler for this practical and inspirational approach. Tomorrow's Children renews my hope for achieving a future that is sustainable and equitable, creative and caring." Jean Hegland
Review
"I hope the vision [Eisler] has put forward here can be realized. With her, I believe that human happiness, if not survival itself, depends on it." Nel Noddings
Review
"This book is a clarion call for and guide to an historic transformation: the shift from the dominator model of power-plays to the partnership model. Informed by Riane Eisler's early childhood experience with Nazism, it asks: why do people hate, hurt, and kill? The answers are woven into a rich historical and cross-cultural tapestry that will inform and delight teachers, parents, and all those active in building a better life for Tomorrow's Children." George Gerbner
Review
"Tomorrow's Children is holistic and helpful, idealistic yet practical. It's written by a scholar who is also a grandmother and it's filled with knowledge, experience and love. Riane Eisler's stories are great; her concepts are wise and timely. This book will stimulate debate on how to educate our children." Mary Pipher
Review
"Tomorrow's Children is an excellent contribution to the peace education movement and of particular relevance to those of us who teach and raise our children in Montessori schools around the world....All too many of us fail to recognize the connection between the schools that we have built today and the children who will become adults tomorrow. It is still more rare to find someone with a clearly stated proposal of what can be done. As the world responds in shock and horror to the violence that seems to be infecting our schools, Riane Eisler offers a practical approach to creating schools that teach partnership, respect, and global understanding." Tim Seldin
Review
"Timely, inspirational, and challenging, this book offers a balanced and useful approach to education and the development of humanity. Schoolteachers, educators, administrators, and parents will find the additional resources at the end of this book useful." Library Journal
Review
"[Eisler] synthesizes a variety of classroom techniques into a compelling framework for developing lessons that speak to the urgency of the environmental and social challenges facing us in the next century. Inviting readers to think outside conventional boxes of educational reform, this is an ambitious, imaginative and practical guide to a better educational future." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Riane Eisler eloquently and powerfully makes the case that our future, indeed our survival, depends upon a profound transformation of our educational system. Her book provides not only the vision but also the action plan necessary to realize this essential change." Jean Kilbourne
Review
"Tomorrow's Children is a profoundly important call and a blueprint for educational reform. With passion and verve, Riane Eisler advances a partnership model as opposed to a dominator model as the best foundation upon which we may, collectively and individually, forge a future of progressive human relations and social organization. As we enter the millennium, this compelling book, with its treasure of insightful materials, serves as a beacon for effective education and collaboration across all boundaries. It should be read by educators, parents, and all who care about our children's tomorrows." Darlene Clark Hine
Review
"More than idealistic chatter, her book gives specific and useful ideas for making the three R's more meaningful." Magical Blend
Review
"All teachers who envision a healthy, happy and responsible future for their students need to read this book and try to create a more partner-oriented classroom. Then they need to convince their administrators to read it!" Orff Echo
Review
"Tomorrow's Children is a blueprint not only for the new education urgently needed for today's and tomorrow's children but for the transformation of consciousness that can take us into a safer, saner, more humane and fulfilling twenty-first century." Conscious Choice
Review
"...[an] intriguing blueprint for the kind of proactive education children will need to meet the demands of the 21st century." Monteray Herald
Review
"Eisler is a revoltionary thinker in the best sense of the word..." Choice Books
Review
"Riane Eisler is a seminal thinker and cocreative human." Library of Conscious Evolution
Review
"...Most...books we forget, some strike us as particularly entertaining, and some, a very few, change the way we think about the world. In such cases, the author must be a true visionary....Be prepared to add to your list...Riane Eisler." Montessori Life
Review
"No philosophical, meandering treatise, this book presents practical activities for encouraging collaboration in the classroom." American School Board Journal
Review
"...A cohesive and compelling blueprint for the kind of proactive education children need to meet the challenges of the 21st century." Call Leader
Synopsis
From the best-selling social thinker, Riane Eisler, a new model for childhood education and a healthier, more humane world.
About the Author
Riane Eisler is best known as the author of the international bestseller The Chalice and the Blade (Harper and Row, 1987). Her other works include Sacred Pleasure (HarperCollins, 1995), The Partnership Way (Holistic Education Press, 1998), and most recently her fictionalized memoir of growing up in Havana, Cuba, as a refugee from the Nazis, The Gate (iuniverse.com). Dr. Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Studies, keynotes conferences around the world, and lives with her husband in the Monterey Peninsula.