In his foreword to the book Rethinking Readiness in Early Childhood Education: Implications for Policy and Practice (edited by Jeanne Marie Iorio and Will Parnell), William Ayers writes, "Every child comes to school a question mark and an exclamation point...every teacher must decide whether...to keep questions and passions alive...or to hammer the children into shape so that they leave her classroom, no longer as vital question marks or exclamation points, but as dull periods." Host Heather Bernt-Santy and cohost Richard Cohen (Zen and the Art of Early Childhood) unpack this powerful idea.