Chris Mercogliano – Jill Grinberg Literary Management

Chris Mercogliano

Chris Mercogliano is the author of Making It Up As We Go Along, the Story of the Albany Free School (Heinemann, 1998), Teaching the Restless, One School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed (Beacon Press, 2004), How to Grow a School: Starting and Sustaining Schools That Work (Oxford Village Press, 2006), In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness (Beacon Press, 2007), and A School Must Have a Heart (Oxford Village Press, 2014). His essays, commentaries, and reviews have appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, and journals, as well as in seven anthologies; and he has also been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio’s “Ideas,” and many other nationally syndicated radio shows. The father of two wonderful daughters, he lives with his wife Betsy on a one-acre farm in downtown Albany, New York.

Agent

Jill Grinberg

In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness

As codirector of the Albany Free School, Chris Mercogliano has had remarkable success in helping a diverse population of youngsters find their way in the world. He regrets, however, that most kids’ lives are subject to some form of control from dawn until dusk. Lamenting risk-averse parents, overstructured school days, and a lack of playtime and solitude, Mercogliano argues that we are robbing our young people of “that precious, irreplaceable period in their lives that nature has set aside for exploration and innocent discovery,” leaving them ill-equipped to face adulthood. The “domestication of childhood” squeezes the adventure out of kids’ lives and threatens to smother the spark that animates each child with talents, dreams, and inclinations.

There is plenty that those involved with children can do to protect their spontaneity and exuberance. We can address their desperate thirst for knowledge, give them space to learn from their mistakes, and let them explore what their place in the adult world might be.

Praise for In Defense of Childhood

“Mercogliano’s book, full of insight, enthusiasm and hope, is as readable and practical as it is illuminating.” –Publishers Weekly

Publisher

Beacon Press

Publication Date

August 1, 2007

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Nonfiction/Education

Rights

JGLM

Teaching the Restless: One School's Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed

We’ve all read the stories about medicating hyperactive (ADHD) kids. The controversy shows no signs of ending, as parents and doctors debate the merits of diagnosing and medicating children at younger and younger ages. Chris Mercogliano has a strong opinion on the matter, and he enters the debate as an educator. In Teaching the Restless, Mercogliano issues an urgent call for a shift in how our society perceives hyperactive children—away from theories of faulty brain chemistry and toward an understanding of children’s lives.

Mercogliano codirects the Albany Free School in Albany, New York. There, he and his faculty have developed numerous ways to help hyperactive children relax, focus, modulate emotional expression, make responsible choices, and forge lasting friendships—all prerequisites for learning—without assigning pathological labels to the children or resorting to the use of biopsychiatric drugs.

Teaching the Restless profiles a handful of Free School students, six boys and three girls. All were either labeled and drugged in their previous schools, or would have been had they not thrown in their lot with the Free School. While in Mercogliano’s mind there is no such thing as a “typical” child, these nine kids represent the legions of children across the country—estimates currently run as high as 6 million—that have been diagnosed with learning and behavioral disorders and prescribed corresponding drugs.

Speaking both to parents who worry that their kids cannot attend classes without drugs and to educators who wonder how to best teach these hyperactive kids, Teaching the Restless should bring new hope into an overcharged debate.

Praise for Teaching the Restless

“This laid-back approach to academics, where teachers wait for the right “mental weather” rather than push children to read or do math before they’re ready, may be hard for some parents to accept, but Mercogliano makes a strong case against medicating these children into submission.” –Publishers Weekly

“For readers who question the ever-increasing prevalence of ADHD diagnoses, the book will come as a validation of their own trepidations. For supporters of biopsychiatric medications like Ritalin, it’s sure to be viewed as irresponsible and unfounded. A recommended purchase for libraries attempting to represent both sides of a controversial issue.” –Booklist