Orient author and educator Jane Smith’s “Through the Passageway” offers a short history of the founding of City and Country School by Caroline Pratt in 1914, and then, through the intimate view of a teacher in collaboration with colleagues from 1968 to 1998, shows the school’s dynamic approach to learning by experience involving jobs, trips, and the arts.

The book presents lively anecdotes of the children (ages three to thirteen) in this setting, for example a five-year-old making a table herself from scratch, and eight-year-olds turning the entire classroom into a ship.

It also recounts what happened when the school faced financial problems and when more conservative politics of the 1980s resulted in the pressure to change.

“Through the Passageway” describes this vibrant school life as an alternative to the more regimented, test-driven direction education has taken at the present time.

Peconic Community School has sponsored this talk. Light refreshments will be served.