This Magazine Is About Schools

This Magazine Is About Schools was a popular magazine that started publishing in Toronto in 1966. It was a strong advocate for new approaches to education, including free schools, alternatives schools, and later, community schools jointly controlled by teachers, students, parents, and local residents. With a number of alternative schools being established in Toronto at that time, This Magazine Is About Schools was not only a source of inspiration but also the forum by which a wider audience gained information about their progress.

This Magazine Is About Schools was strongly socialist in orientation, and its aim was to transform education away from an alienating, standardized curriculum tied to the industrial-capitalist function of turning out dutiful worker-employees. Instead, the magazine advocated for an educational experience connected to the personal authenticity and self-determination of students, with new values for living reinforced by the classroom milieu. The larger goal of the magazine was to connect education to the wider movement for community-control over socio-political issues.

This Magazine Is About Schools was widely read around the world because at the time it was one of the few magazines highlighting current educational innovative thinking, with a focus on individual student needs.

In the 1970s, the magazine changed its focus, name, and appearance, becoming simply This Magazine, reflecting its move to a larger range of political and cultural topics. It is still published in Toronto.

The Connexions Archive holds an almost-complete collection of issues of This Magazine Is About Schools.


Related Reading:
This Book Is About Schools


Related Topics:
Alternative Schools – Education – Education Reform – Educational Philsophy – Schools