Fragments of a Lesson Plan

About the Book

An informal, sometimes flip, scathingly provocative journal, Fragments of a Lesson Plan has emerged from Robert Belenky's personal and professional journey in search of ways to be useful to others as a psychologist-educator. His style is indicative of the art-exploratory, questioning, ambivalent at times.

Belenky has pulled together tangential pieces and parts of his work as a psychologist, educator, and researcher. He presents the good with the bad in a collection from his personal journal, from reports, from tape-recorded interviews of the people he has dealt with-children, mothers, criminals, teachers, comp counselors, juvenile delinquents and colleagues.

With frankness and honesty, he lets the reader in on the open disputes, the racial friction, the "ego trips", and the muddling-through which occur in all experimental projects-but never get reported. He presents real programs and real people from a close perspective.

The result is a welcome antidote to the self-laudatory, jargon-filled memoranda and papers written for the heads of foundations and professional journals. His "ruminations" make indispensable reading for the would-be community mental health architect.

About the Author

Clinical Child Psychologist, Robert Belenky has worked in schools, camps, communities, colleges, and universities. In 1959, he received his doctorate from Columbia University. Currently, he is working on a series of books about children in Haiti, Russia, and the United States whose lives are hard. His interest is in describing ways to be of use to such children. Fragments of a Lesson Plan is the first book of the contemplated series.