This chapter compares education to the Victory Gardens of World War II, when Americans were encouraged to plant gardens of their own to help with food rationing. Perkins gives several examples of "Victory Gardens" that have been planted by educators that exempify excellence and care. Like their green counterparts, these outstanding examples need continual planting and nurturing. Perkins refers to five dimensions: to aid in educational Victory Gardens:

Theory One. Instruction should include clear information, reflective practice, information feedback, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Pedagogy of understanding. Should should be engaged in performances that lead to understanding (explaining, finding examples, generalizing).

Metacurriculum. "On top" of school content, students should learn to think and take control of their own learning.

Distributed intelligence. Groups are smarter than individuals; schools should shift from a "person-solo" to a "person-plus" organization of classroom activities.

Cognitive economy. Creating instuction that impliments authentic assessments

Perkins believes that it is essential for teachers to try to incorporate the five dimensions in each lesson that is taught. This will further the understanding and long-term retrieval of the information being taught.

Examples of applications of these dimensions are used at the end of this chapter. Two examples are as follows: Jaime Escalante's classroom, from the movie Stand and Deliver, and biology for young inquires. Jaime Escalante'/s classroom was established with high expectations and small class size. This enabled Jaime to achieve great things with his Calculus students. The biology class was established with hands on activies for students to do at whatever level they were at to start the lesson. After reviewing each lesson example. Perkins further explains how these examples apply the five dimensions referred to above.

This chapter allows teachers to review another point of view of how to teach effectively and enhance lifelong learning. The more Victory Gardens that are planted the more rapidly they will grow. At the end of the chapter Perkins summarizes a smart school. A smart school extends into the lives of students outside of school. It also includes systematically a number of features that both research and educational practice have found to be important to thoughtful learning. The dimensions used by Perkins seek to make explicit and articulate what goes into thoughtful teaching and learning. A checklist of questions is given at the end of the book to help teachers implement the five dimensions into their teaching.