A Source of Ideas

Memo to the principal: Do not be alarmed if your teachers walk up stairs with toes pointed in, then down again with toes pointed out. Or if they break into deep knee bends at the blackboard. Or if, standing in the lunchroom, they tighten first their feet, then their lower legs, thighs, buttocks and abdominal muscles.

Such antics do not mean they need a vacation; they have simply been reading Physical Fitness Expert Bonnie Pruden's article in Learning, the newest, brightest education magazine for the 1.8 million U.S. elementary and junior high school teachers.

The March issue ranges from an article on new gains by teachers' unions to a progress report on the education of the handicapped. One teacher, Wanda Gray, explains how she encourages self-expression and understanding by assigning the pupil to interview his parents. What was school like when they were eleven? The children then make taped or written documentaries of their home and neighborhood. What is bedtime like? How does it sound when you get up in the morning?

Learning was founded by J. Vincent Drucker, 31, a marketing-research specialist and son of Peter Drucker, the management consultant, economist and educator. Three years ago, Vincent decided that "teachers, particularly innovative ones, thought of themselves as isolated, as underexposed to new ideas." He managed to raise $1.2 million to begin publication. As editor, he hired Frank McCulloch, 53, a veteran of TIME and LIFE magazines. Says McCulloch: "A child comes to school with certain information, with feelings, with notions about life. It's the teacher's job to make the child more curious --not to treat him as an uninformed little person who must be enlightened."

Thus Learning's regular monthly features include a "Swap Shop" of tested teaching ideas and a centerfold poster that teachers can use as a lesson plan. This month's poster helps children evaluate the relationship between laws and basic rights. Future issues will include interviews with well-known child-development theorists--Jean Piaget, for example, and Bruno Bettelheim--and articles by authors who rarely write about education, such as Science-Fiction Novelist Ray Bradbury.

Despite its price ($10 for nine issues a year), Learning has prospered since its first issue in November. Its advertising, averaging 14.6 pages per issue, is slightly below Drucker's original projections, but its paid circulation of 120,000 subscribers is slightly above. More than 99% of its mail from teachers has been favorable. Learning has even won praise from a competitor, David W. Cudhea, managing editor of Saturday Review of Education: It is, he says, a "bright new penny in the field."

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