The 1960s inspired the visionary, awakened the dreams of youth, and excited the imagination of a world that recently had emerged from phantom atomic shelters. With the renewal of the search for the milennium, however, there came no abatement in the fears that had first been generated when impotent men unleashed atomic power. Cynics continued to parade their doubts while fatalists popularized their despair. The events of the past decade revealed that Americans hold a diversity of values and convictions. While the deeds generated by their differences unveiled appalling injustice and numberless violations of our sacred democratic charter, they also served to illustrate to a doubting world that many Americans continued to cherish a belief in liberty, a hope in equality, and a dream of fraternity. The conflicts, however, also revealed that the centripetal forces of national institutions, especially the public schools, had not succeeded in removing the ideological differences among the citizens of the United States. With the advent of the seventies, America began a long overdue examination of itself. Many questions remain concerning the future direction of the United States, and they must be answered, for the direction we take will be largely determined by our willingness to look courageously at ourselves. This text is written to assist the teacher, the future teacher, and the concerned layman in analyzing the ideological fabric called Americanism. It is designed to provide an overview of American ideological emphases and their educational implications. If individuals who read this book increase their awareness of the fact that some conflicts among human beings result from sincere ideological differences, we will have achieved our goal. Disagreement between and among individuals need not imply malevolence, ignorance, or dishonesty. Lack of consensus is not less noble than agreement. This book offers a way (not the way) of viewing differences and similarities in the ideological fabric labeled Americanism. It should serve the teacher as the beginning of his or her exploration into the mysterious world of ideology and education. - Introduction.

Drawing on elements of progressive education, existential theory, feminist pedagogy, and values education, critical humanism combines the holistic-psychological concerns of humanistic education with the sociopolitical contextualization of critical pedagogy. Developed over the past seventeen years in one of North America's most experimental postsecondary programs, The New School of Dawson College, this theory and practice responds to both the personal and the political needs of students. Reconstructing Education is at once a review of this century's educational theories, an account of the work at the school, and an empowering illustration of the way in which schools can incite the motivation of students and encourage them to become active members in a truly democratic society. The case study chapters on The New School give concrete examples of how this philosophy is manifested in the school's methodology, structure, and pedagogy and draws heavily on the written work of teachers and students. To formulate a similar approach for a specific school, it is essential to combine a rigorous analysis of existing educational models with the dialectical process of creating and recreating a new model defined by the articulation of both learners' and teachers' affective, cognitive, and socially constructed needs. This is a valuable book for anyone concerned with alternative approaches to education and for courses on educational theory or the philosophy of education.

At a time of increasing pressure for teachers to become more professional and more technically competent, this book examines in a critical fashion whether teachers should be considered experts. Written in straightforward and accessible prose, Welker examines the concept of expertise through the ideas of notable educational thinkers in the twentieth century--beginning with E.P. Cubberley and George S. Counts and concluding with a chapter on critical theory and the ideas of Maxine Greene and Henry Giroux. Other chapters examine such thinkers as Willard Waller, Daniel Lortie, Alan Tom, Philip Jackson, and Ivan Illich. Each chapter establishes an historical and ideological context and evaluates how the social character of the expert matches the responsibilities. While the idea of the teacher assuming the role of educational expert is gaining increased credibility in the current reform movement, this book shows that the concept fails to describe the senses of moral and social competence required of the teacher. Also the notion of the expert teacher might stand in the way of teachers forming the type of public partnerships necessary for them to complete their tasks adequately.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume argues for the need of a common ground that bridges leadership studies, curriculum theory, and Didaktik. It proposes a non-affirmative education theory and its core concepts along with discursive institutionalism as an analytical tool to bridge these fields. It concludes with implications of its coherent theoretical framing for future empirical research. Recent neoliberal policies and transnational governance practices point toward new tensions in nation state education. These challenges affect governance, leadership and curriculum, involving changes in aims and values that demand coherence. Yet, the traditionally disparate fields of educational leadership, curriculum theory and Didaktik have developed separately, both in terms of approaches to theory and theorizing in USA, Europe and Asia, and in the ways in which these theoretical traditions have informed empirical studies over time. An additional aspect is that modern education theory was developed in relation to nation state education, which, in the meantime, has become more complicated due to issues of ‘globopolitanism’. This volume examines the current state of affairs and addresses the issues involved. In doing so, it opens up a space for a renewed and thoughtful dialogue to rethink and re-theorize these traditions with non-affirmative education theory moving beyond social reproduction and social transformation perspectives.

This book provides a fresh critique of John Dewey and the progressive tradition and warns against the superficial renaissance of Deweyan philosophy present in many of today's modern liberal educational reform movements. Challenging the four pillars of Dewey's pragmatism — science, nature, democracy, experience — Paringer argues for a critical or radical education praxis that more sensitively comes to grips with the difficulties of the nuclearized, postmodern world.

The first woman elected superintendent of schools in Rowan County, Kentucky, Cora Wilson Stewart (1875–1958) realized that a major key to overcoming the illiteracy that plagued her community was to educate adult illiterates. To combat this problem, Stewart opened up her schools to adults during moonlit evenings in the winter of 1911. The result was the creation of the Moonlight Schools, a grassroots movement dedicated to eliminating illiteracy in one generation. Following Stewart’s lead, educators across the nation began to develop similar literacy programs; within a few years, Moonlight Schools had emerged in Minnesota, South Carolina, and other states. Cora Wilson Stewart and Kentucky’s Moonlight Schools examines these institutions and analyzes Stewart’s role in shaping education at the state and national levels. To improve their literacy, Moonlight students learned first to write their names and then advanced to practical lessons about everyday life. Stewart wrote reading primers for classroom use, designing them for rural people, soldiers, Native Americans, prisoners, and mothers. Each set of readers focused on the knowledge that individuals in the target group needed to acquire to be better citizens within their community. The reading lessons also emphasized the importance of patriotism, civic responsibility, Christian morality, heath, and social progress. Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin explores the “elusive line between myth and reality” that existed in the rhetoric Stewart employed in order to accomplish her crusade. As did many educators engaged in benevolent work during the Progressive Era, Stewart sometimes romanticized the plight of her pupils and overstated her successes. As she traveled to lecture about the program in other states interested in addressing the problem of illiteracy, she often reported that the Moonlight Schools took one mountain community in Kentucky “from moonshine and bullets to lemonade and Bibles.” All rhetoric aside, the inclusive Moonlight Schools ultimately taught thousands of Americans in many under-served communities across the nation how to read and write. Despite the many successes of her programs, when Stewart retired in 1932, the crusade against adult illiteracy had yet to be won. Cora Wilson Stewart presents the story of a true pioneer in adult literacy and an outspoken advocate of women’s political and professional participation and leadership. Her methods continue to influence literacy programs and adult education policy and practice.

First Published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Many contemporary Israelis suffer from a strange condition. Despite the obvious successes of the Zionist enterprise and the State of Israel, tension persists, with a collective sense that something is wrong and should be better. This cognitive dissonance arises from the disjunction between ÒplaceÓ (defined as what Israel is really like) and ÒPlaceÓ (defined as the imaginary community comprised of history, myth, and dream). Through the lens of five major works in Hebrew by writers Abraham Mapu (1853), Theodor Herzl (1902), Yosef Luidor (1912), Moshe Shamir (1948), and Amos Oz (1963), Schwartz unearths the core of this paradox as it evolves over one hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s.

A young Somali girl immigrates to Minnesota and through the friendship of a wounded Canada goose learns how to accept her new life in America.