Though bed-bound, Tom Sobol celebrates Dewey's vision of life as education
By Joe Levine
The opening page of Tom Sobol's memoir, My Life In School (2012), is blank save for what appears to be an inked fingerprint. It's an appropriate symbol for an author limited to typing with one finger -- Sobol, afflicted by a spinal-cord disorder, has been bed-bound for the past three years -- but the symbolism may have broader intention.
My Life In School chronicles Sobol's nearly 80 years in education, including his eventful tenure as New York State's Commissioner of Education, when he sided with plaintiffs from New York City who sued the state for more education funding. But its real focus is on the kind of learning that disciples of John Dewey like to call "hands-on."
In prose reminiscent of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Sobol, who retired as TC's Christian A. Johnson Professor of Outstanding Practice in 2006, describes how at age 12 he cooked and cared for his two younger brothers when his mother abruptly left the family. He chronicles his path from his tough Irish Catholic neighborhood to Harvard. And, reflecting a penchant familiar to anyone who took his TC law and ethics courses, he ponders his own moral choices.
Published Thursday, Jun. 27, 2013