Passion and enthusiasm drip from these pages, unabated after 40 years of work in the education system.
Pountney wades unafraid into every debate, with a strong opinion on everything from whether children should be taught to write neatly to her draft for a Charter for Aotearoa.
Just a fewchapters after she has reminisced about the University of Auckland in 1964 ("a bitter disappointment ... All our lecturers except one crusty old woman were men, and almost all our courses were about male world views"), she's hoeing into the present NCEA proposals.
Pountney was one of the first within education to realise that our system did not offer equality of opportunity to all.