IT'S HARD TO BE GOOD: Moral Complexity, Construction, and Connection in a Kindergarten Classroom.

Brian M. McCadden. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. 130 pp. $29.95. McCadden's book is the eighth in the "Rethinking Childhood" series, which aims to encourage critical reexamination of prevailing views of children's development, and the ways in which educators study that development. Earlier volumes addressed social justice issues, feminist perspectives, and cultural conflict in early childhood programs.

In this work, McCadden takes issue with "developmentalism" as "a hegemonic force affecting schooling" (p. 9). He particularly focuses on the way that children (and adults) determine the "right" ways of behaving in school. In contrast with the view of schools as moral vacuums needing large infusions of "character education," McCadden finds that the daily life of school is full of moral activity, and so he concludes that moral education is a byproduct of what happens when children and teachers strive to make sense of their experiences.

McCadden spent one day a week for a year as an observer/helper in a kindergarten classroom, then returned the following year to examine the way the classroom culture is shaped during the first few months of school. He casts his account of that experience in story form in order to distinguish his qualitative research from the scientific approach of most education research. However, readers expecting a story like those of Vivian Paley, for example, may conclude that McCadden did not distance himself quite as far from scientific education literature as he implies. Teachers will find provocative ideas in this book, but they will have to tolerate a fair amount of jargon along the way. For example, we are told that children may not be able to "relativize the assumptions guiding organizational morality," and that "whether or not [they] can truly 'problematize' . . . is open to debate" (p. 106).

Introductory chapters lay out the issue, identify the author's theoretical framework, and describe the setting and context. Chapters 3 and 4 describe what McCadden views as the contrasting types of morality prevailing at school. Inside the classroom is the domain of organizational morality, which is adult-controlled, rational, and aimed at shaping students. Outside, on the playground, is the domain of relational morality, where emotions matter and children pursue their intense interest in connecting with each other - in other words, becoming persons, not just students. In chapter 6, McCadden criticizes this separation and argues that only by connecting the two worlds can educators make learning relevant beyond the classroom. He recounts his own efforts to draw this connection with the children and offers several practical suggestions. An appendix gives a detailed account of the way the children in this classroom learned to choose and participate in centers.

Teachers are likely to appreciate McCadden's determination to "move away from telling school people what to do and think and toward listening to what they have to tell us" (p. 15). McCadden considers all viewpoints with respect and sympathy and finds his own thinking transformed in the process of conducting his research. He confesses, for example, that he entered the classroom believing, like Rousseau, in the uncorrupted state of childhood; when chaos threatened to erupt, however, he learned to appreciate the teacher's burden of maintaining order.

Unfortunately, McCadden apparently accepts without question his teacher/subject's characterization of her classroom practices as developmentally appropriate because she uses centers and hands-on activities, instead of worksheets and seatwork. Yet his description of what actually happens in this classroom bears scant resemblance to the concept of developmentally appropriate practice as described in the education literature, and which McCadden spurns. Rather than becoming deeply engaged in authentically interesting work, the children he studied were expected to work at designated centers until the teacher signaled them to stop. They are asked to "choose" centers according to a complicated procedure that involved very little genuine choice. The children's ideas, as well as their feelings, clearly mattered less than their obedience and conformity. Of course, part of McCadden's point is to question the assumption that such conformity is a prerequisite to academic learning, but this reader wishes he had also questioned the distorted view of developmentally appropriate practice. Reviewed by Patricia Hearron, Associate Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC