A Progressive Quote

This quote from A. David Schwartz, former owner of the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop in Milwaukee (Schwartz is now deceased, though the store has reincarnated itself as an online biz book site 800CEOREAD.com): 

“Bookselling was and is … a cultural and political expression, an expression of progressive change, of challenge to oppressive authority, of a search for a community of values which can act as an underpinning of a better world. The true profit in bookselling is the social profit; the bottom line, the measure of the impact of the books on the community.”

Replace “bookselling” with “education” in both lines where it occurs and I think you have a glorious statement of the ethos behind progressive education. It capture why I am on the board of a progressive school (Wildwood in Los Angeles) and why progressive education matters beyond the individual students inside.