School

by Robert Coles, Nicholas Nixon

In a rare collaboration, Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychiatrist Robert Coles and photographer Nicholas Nixon explore the lives of children in three Boston-area settings: a Cambridge elementary school, Perkins School for the Blind, and the elite Boston Latin School. A microcosm of American schoolchildren today, the students photographed by Nixon range from the profoundly challenged, at Perkins, to the most gifted. Nixon's penetrating portraits, some accompanied by comments by or about the children, alternate with a three-part essay by Dr. Coles, himself a graduate of Boston Latin and intimately familiar with the other two schools. Exploring the students' inner lives with extraordinary sensitivity, Dr. Coles also recalls key moments that helped to shape his own very influential outlook.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Child psychiatrist, author, Harvard professor.

Robert Coles is a professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at the Harvard Medical School, a research psychiatrist for the Harvard University Health Services, and the James Agee Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard College.