The "secret" of motivating the child to involve himself in the learning process-whatever his age, socio-economic level, or cultural background - is to deal in some way with the deep underlying feelings, wishes, and fears that stimulate his actions and color his response to the world. This was the major finding of the Elementary School Teaching Project, an action-research program undertaken by the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advancement of Education in an attempt to discover teaching practices that had proved successful with ghetto children. Spurred by this conclusion, the program staff turned its efforts to the development of a "curriculum of affect," a model for teaching based on pupils' concerns and feelings rather than on purely cognitive goals. By adapting this model, described and illustrated in this book, to suit his own competencies and the needs of his students, the teacher can identify his pupils' concerns, use them in teaching standard intellectual content, or deal with them directly, as content in their own right. The model thus embodies an open-ended approach to teaching and learning that engages the child as a whole-hearted participant in the educational process by making that process "relevant,' to him in the most profound sense,