The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks liked to distinguish between optimism and hope. Optimism, he argued, was a passive virtue. Hope, on the other hand, was active. “It needs no courage to be an optimist,” he wrote in To Heal a Fractured World, “but it takes a great deal of courage to hope.” To hope is to recognize that we can make the world better, but it is going to take work.
The hope-versus-optimism distinction comes to the fore in Jeanne Allen’s The Education Avengers, a collection of biographical sketches of 12 education reformers from across the United States. Together, these individuals embody hope in action. In different places and in different ways, they have committed to trying to make the world better. Their stories make an inspiring read.
There is Mary Jo Fairhead, who operates a small private school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. There is Aaron Frumin, who founded the workforce development nonprofit unCommon Construction in New Orleans that allows high school students to earn credits through building houses. There is Cris Gulacy-Worrel, who overcame a heartbreakingly traumatic childhood to help found Oakmont Education in Ohio, a network of now 21 workforce-development focused schools that serve students who have become disconnected from the traditional education system.
by Jeanne Allen
Simon & Schuster, 2026, $28.99; 256 pages
Like the superheroes from which the book draws its title, several of the people profiled have taken genuinely courageous stands.
Eugene Slocum founded the charter school Alpha Academy in Fayetteville, North Carolina. To keep it alive he refused to accept a paycheck, took out a second mortgage on his house, and cleaned the building in addition to teaching classes. José and Ampy Suárez became foster parents before founding Hope Ranch in Pasco County, Florida. What started as a program for foster children grew into services for autistic children and then transitional services for autistic young adults. JoAnn Mitchell, in her own words “burned the ships at the shore,” throwing herself entirely into starting Mission Achievement and Success Charter School in New Mexico.
Many of these people had comfortable lives that they purposely left behind to serve children. Others clearly would have had an easier life doing just about anything else. But they decided to forgo affluence and comfort in order to do something important. It is genuinely admirable.
The book does not offer a specific suite of policy proposals that might nurture more “Education Avengers.” But reading between the lines, one discerns that the author is clearly pro–school choice. She also argues for creating space in the traditional system to allow for outside-the-box educators to create new and better learning environments.
Allen calls the Avengers’ enemy the Hydra—the amalgam of people, organizations, rules, and bureaucracy that maintains stasis in the education system and works to thwart the efforts of the Avengers at every turn.
While she offers no specific policy recommendations, she does develop some distinct themes. One of them centers on overcoming adversity. Many of the people profiled in this volume overcame serious life challenges. From abuse to neglect to poor education options, they faced a gamut of adverse experiences as children. But the adversity didn’t stop there. Many, when starting their education enterprises, found that those in the traditional education sector sought to impede them. The Hydra was spawning heads and trying to devour them.
But Allen, through the stories of the people she profiles, argues that adversity can strengthen people, driving personal and professional growth. Had these Education Avengers not experienced adversity in their lives, many, if not all, of them would probably not have become the people they are nor have created the schools they envisioned. Because of the struggles they have overcome, they can not only relate better to their students and understand the needs of their schools’ families and communities, but they can also draw on their resilience when faced with roadblocks from a recalcitrant system.
Perhaps my favorite theme of the book, however, is joy. The Education Avengers time and again explain that they want their schools to be places of joy. Joyful places can still have serious purpose and high expectations for students, but when oriented toward encouraging true flourishing, such schools can lead to the kind of satisfaction and accomplishment that remains with students long after they leave. Any school can be a “happy” school: Don’t ask anything of students, pass them along, tell them everything they are doing is right. That will make them happy, at least for now. But over the long term, that is setting them up for misery. To encourage joy tomorrow, there is work to be done today.
By the way, I’ve only seen one Avengers movie (the one where Thanos kills half of them, where I sat in the theater feeling nothing—because I didn’t know the characters’ backstories—while my fellow movie watchers gasped and groaned), so I’m not the best judge as to whether the Avengers make for a good analogue.
By the way, I’ve only seen one Avengers movie (the one where Thanos kills half of them, where I sat in the theater feeling nothing—because I didn’t know the characters’ backstories—while my fellow movie watchers gasped and groaned), so I’m not the best judge as to whether the Avengers make for a good analogue.
