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This study of Susan Isaacs and her work introduces the reader to a personality who emerges with great intellectual strength and independence as well as insight and humanity. The qualities are conveyed very largely through the presentation of her work, and more specifically her work in the field of education. In turn this is related to a period of intense debate on and interest in issues of childhood development and approaches to education. The author, who is Professor of Education at Simmons College Boston, has a special interest in English sources of informal education (1976). This it seems increasingly drew her towards more detailed explorations of Susan Isaac's work and research into teaching methods that might be based on a “thorough understanding of the value of play and direct experience”.
The biographical details of Mrs. Isaacs' early life are summarized in a few pages, from which we learn that she was born Susan Fairhurst in 1885, the ninth child of a Methodist lay preacher, who was also a journalist, and his wife in Bromley Cross, near Bolton, Lancashire. Before she was eight months old, a brother just a little older than herself, died. When she was three, another and much-loved older brother left to join the merchant navy. She was only four years old when her mother became seriously ill and died two years later.
Strictness and conformity appear to have dominated in the household and in her disappointing experiences at school. However her enthusiasm for learning remained undimmed, prompted readings in philosophy, a conversion to agnosticism and a consequent two-year estrangement from her father, who therefore withdrew her from school (not yet aged 15). Formal education was not resumed again until the age of twenty-two, with her father's permission, at Manchester University. Here she trained initially as a teacher with a special interest in primary schools, but then moved on to take a first class honours degree in philosophy. This was followed by a change of d