For the fi rst time in human history, we are living in an age where the youth of our nation know more about societys cutting-edge tools than the adults charged with passing societys technical and cultural knowledge on to them. Most of our young people have far more facility with computer and telecommunications technology than our teaching corps and, generally, that gap only widens as students travel from elementary school all the way to university and beyond. Its a brave new and, often, dangerous world that todays youth must learn to navigate. Now, more than ever, they need educators to step up and teach them how to be critical thinkers able to discriminate between the true and the merely seductive, to see beyond the glossy veneer on harmful websites harmful ideas and, sadly, harmful people in both the real and cyber worlds. We need to spend a little less time teaching students how to take standardized tests and a lot more time developing their critical faculties, so they will be able to solve lifes problems, profi t from challenging situations, and understand the increasingly complex world they must ken at an earlier and earlier age.

In this unique two-volume work, expert scholars and practitioners examine race and racism in public education, tackling controversial educational issues such as the school-to-prison pipeline, charter schools, school funding, affirmative action, and racialized curricula. This work is built on the premise that recent efforts to advance color-blind, race-neutral educational policies and reforms have not only proven ineffective in achieving racial equity and equality of educational opportunities and outcomes in America's public schools but also exacerbated existing inequalities. That point is made through a collection of essays that examine the consequences of racial inequality on the school experience and success of students of color and other historically marginalized populations. Addressing K–12 education and higher education in historically black as well as predominantly white institutions, the work probes the impact of race and racism on education policies and reforms to determine the role schools, school processes, and school structures play in the perpetuation of racial inequality in American education. Each volume validates the impact of race on teaching and learning and exposes the ways in which racism manifests itself in U.S. schools. In addition, practical recommendations are presented that may be used to confront and eradicate racism in education. By exposing what happens when issues of race and racism are marginalized or ignored, this collection will prepare readers to resist—and perhaps finally overcome—the racial inequality that plagues America's schools.

Structured schools, free schools, graded schools, ungraded schools, no schools at all—the conflicts over public education in America rage on, for contemporary schools have not lived up to our expectations. The essence of the criticism reflected in the essays in this volume is that America's dual educational goals—free inquiry and social mobility-are not being met. Instead of producing enlightened citizens capable of high social and economic mobility, our schools have become warehouses of children stored as commodities, docile and immobile.

Both financial and political factors impede the positive role of education in social and economic development in Latin America. This book argues that the inefficient operation of its education system constitutes one reason why Latin America is increasingly marginal on the world scene.