Suchergebnisse

The contributors to this special issue of The Journal of Inquiry and Action provide insight into why the Obama administration's educational policies manifest the dominance of neoliberal ideology over most elements of social life. The articles presented herein build on the work originally presented in The Phenomenon of Obama and the agenda for Education: Can hope audaciously trump neoliberalism? (Carr & Porfilio, 2011).

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Series Editor Introduction -- Acknowledgments -- 1 The Demise, of the Public in Public Schools -- 2 Understanding the Rise of Neoliberal Policies -- 3 Governor Cuomo and the Neoliberal Attack on Public Schools, Teachers, and Unions -- 4 The Gates Foundation, Pearson, and Arne Duncan -- 5 Manufactured and Real Crises: Rethinking Education and Capitalism -- Index.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SCHOOLS Knowledge, Networks and New Economies by Gerard Macdonald, Centre for Research in Innovation Management, University of Brighton, UK and David Hursh, Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester, USA Contemporary school systems are not working well. Educational solutions abound, but the problems remain. This is because our school systems are not primarily concerned with education. Their driving forces are political and economic. Any systemic solution to schooling's current difficulties will start with politics; not, in any conventional sense, with education. Twenty-first Century Schools traces the extension of political control over Britain's school system and, through US case studies, looks at alternative methods of organisation. The authors argue that Anglo-American school systems provide a good education for a small minority and, to the majority, offer inadequate schooling. Though this has always been inequitable it may, in the past, have been economically efficient, at least from the viewpoint of the state. If that was once true for mercantile and industrial economies, it is not true now. The knowledge economies toward which the UK and US are moving demand a continuing ability to learn, and to innovate, right across the workforce. Our time-honoured tradition of anachronistic curricula, didactically taught, does not develop these qualities. For those reasons the current Anglo-American drive to entrench unequal educational opportunity is at once economically, politically and socially misconceived. From these premises, Twenty-first Century Schools goes on to outline the political and educational changes needed to shape school systems which are socially and economically adapted to the new century.

In 1932 George Counts, in his speech ""Dare the School Build a New Social Order?"" explicitly challenged teachers to develop a democratic, socialistic society. In Democratic Social Education: Social Studies for Social Change Drs. Hursh and Ross take seriously the question of what social studies educators can do to help build a democratic society in the face of current antidemocratic impulses of greed, individualism and intolerance. The essays in this book respond to Counts' question in theoretical analyses of education and society, historical analyses of efforts since Counts' challenge, and pr

Every day we are exposed to toxins and toxicants that can impact our health. Yet we rarely teach elementary and secondary students about these exposures and how they can reduce their risk to them. In this book, we highlight activities and curriculum developed at nine universities in the United States from a grant funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Our goal is to extend these lessons to a global audience and for classroom teachers of all subjects and age levels to include environmental health in their teaching. "An invaluable tool for equipping informed citi

The rise of high-stakes testing in New York and across the nation has narrowed and simplified what is taught, while becoming central to the effort to privatize public schools. However, it and similar reform efforts have met resistance, with New York as the exemplar for how to repel standardized testing and invasive data collection, such as inBloom. In New York, the two parent/teacher organizations that have been most effective are Long Island Opt Out and New York State Allies for Public Education. The opt-out movement has been so successful that 20% of students statewide and 50% of students on Long Island refused to take tests. In Opting Out, two parent leaders of the opt-out movement--Jeanette Deutermann and Lisa Rudley--tell why and how they became activists in the two organizations. The story of parents, students, and teachers resisting not only high-stakes testing but also privatization and other corporate reforms parallels the rise of teachers across the country going on strike to demand increases in school funding and teacher salaries. Both the success of the opt-out movement and teacher strikes reflect the rise of grassroots organizing using social media to influence policy makers at the local, state, and national levels.