Radical Education and the Common School

Radical Education and the Common School
Author: Michael Fielding
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2010-12-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1136870318

What is education, what is it for and what are its fundamental values? How do we understand knowledge and learning? What is our image of the child and the school? How does the ever more pressing need to develop a more just, creative and sustainable democratic society affect our responses to these questions? Addressing these fundamental issues, Fielding and Moss contest the current mainstream dominated by markets and competition, instrumentality and standardisation, managerialism and technical practice. They argue instead for a radical education with democracy as a fundamental value, care as a central ethic, a person-centred education that is education in the broadest sense, and an image of a child rich in potential. Radical education, they say, should be practiced in the ‘common school’, a school for all children in its local catchment area, age-integrated, human scale, focused on depth of learning and based on team working. A school understood as a public space for all citizens, a collective workshop of many purposes and possibilities, and a person-centred learning community, working closely with other schools and with local authorities. The book concludes by examining how we might bring such transformation about. Written by two of the leading experts in the fields of early childhood and secondary education, the book covers a wide vista of education for children and young people. Vivid examples from different stages of education are used to explore the full meaning of radical democratic education and the common school and how they can work in practice. It connects rich thinking and experiences from the past and present to offer direction and hope for the future. It will be of interest and inspiration to all who care about education - teachers and students, academics and policy makers, parents and politicians.

Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times

Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times
Author: Robert L. Hampel
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2021-11-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030770591

From 1966 to 1970, historian Martin Duberman transformed his undergraduate Princeton seminar on American radicalism. This book looks closely at the seminar, drawing on interviews with former students and colleagues, conversations with Duberman, and abundant archival material in the Princeton archives and the Duberman Papers. The array of evidence makes the book a primer on how historians gather and interpret evidence while at the same time shining light on the tumultuous late 1960s in American higher education. This book will become a tool for teaching, inspiring educators to rethink the ways in which history is taught and teaching students how to reason historically through sources.

Toward a New Common School Movement

Toward a New Common School Movement
Author: Noah De Lissovoy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317250281

Toward a New Common School Movement is a bold and urgent call to action.The authors argue that corporate school reform in the United States represents a failed project subverted by profiteering, corruption, and educational inequalities.Toward a New Common School Movement suggests that educational privatization and austerity are not simply bad policies but represent a broader redistribution of control over social life-that is, the enclosure of the global commons. This condition requires far more than a liberal defense of public schooling. It requires recovering elements of the radical progressive educational tradition while generating a new language of the common suitable to the unique challenges of the global era. Toward a New Common School Movement traces the history of struggles over public schooling in the United States and provides a set of ethical principles for enacting the commons in educational policy, finance, labor, curriculum, and pedagogy. Ultimately, it argues for global educational struggles in common for a just and sustainable future beyond the crises of neoliberalism and predatory capitalism.

Pillars of the Republic

Pillars of the Republic
Author: Carl F. Kaestle
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 142993171X

Pillars of the Republic is a pioneering study of common-school development in the years before the Civil War. Public acceptance of state school systems, Kaestle argues, was encouraged by the people's commitment to republican government, by their trust in Protestant values, and by the development of capitalism. The author also examines the opposition to the Founding Fathers' educational ideas and shows what effects these had on our school system.

Radical Equality in Education

Radical Equality in Education
Author: Joanne Larson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2014-02-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1136310975

Tinkering with the current educational system from within has not provided a just and equitable education for all children. In this book, acclaimed education theorist Joanne Larson poses basic questions about the nature and purpose of schooling. Proposing that what is needed is a new purpose that is more consistent with contemporary knowledge production processes—one that moves beyond the either/or binary of preparing workers/citizens in a competitive global economy or a democracy, Larson argues that the only real solution is to start over in U.S. education—the purpose of schooling should be to facilitate human learning, meaning making, and knowledge production toward just and equitable education for all. Radical Equality in Education offers a new ontological starting point and a new theoretical framing that would follow from it; articulates theoretical, curricular, pedagogical, and assessment principles that frame a real plan for fundamental change in American education, and presents examples of what these ideas might look like in schools and communities.

Radical

Radical
Author: Michelle Rhee
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0062204009

In Radical, Michelle Rhee, a fearless and pioneering advocate for education reform, draws on her own life story and delivers her plan for better American schools. Rhee’s goal is to ensure that laws, leaders, and policies are making students—not adults—our top priority, and she outlines concrete steps that will put us on a dramatically different course. Informing her critique are her extraordinary experiences in education: her years of teaching in inner-city Baltimore; her turbulent tenure as chancellor of the Washington, DC public schools; and her current role as CEO of the education nonprofit StudentsFirst. Rhee draws on dozens of compelling examples from schools she’s worked in and studied, from students who’ve left behind unspeakable home lives and thrived in the classroom to teachers whose groundbreaking methods have produced unprecedented leaps in student achievement. An incisive and intensely personal call-to-arms, Michelle Rhee’s Radical is required reading for anyone who seeks a guide to not only the improvement of our schools, but also a brighter future for America’s children.

Reclaiming Freedom in Education

Reclaiming Freedom in Education
Author: Max A. Hope
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2018-11-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351690515

Reclaiming Freedom in Education examines the notion of ‘freedom’ within educational settings. Following an investigation of the new ‘Free Schools’ in the UK, it argues that this name is a misnomer, and instead explores the original free schools of the 1960s and 1970s, using these models as a lens through which to explore contemporary examples of radical schooling, notably those which describe themselves as democratic and/or progressive. By arguing that in radical educational contexts both ‘positive freedom’ and ‘negative freedom’ are apparent, and that the notion that ‘responsible freedom’ is more pertinent than that of ‘absolute freedom’, this book posits that freedom can be seen to operate in a number of ways including ‘freedom to be’, ‘freedom to think’, ‘freedom to choose’ and ‘freedom to self-govern’. The book: Describes how freedom can be used to inform educational structures, policies, pedagogies and practices across a range of settings Features illustrative case studies of radical free schools and alternative education spaces which have been underpinned by a commitment to freedom and to advancing social justice Critiques the current policy agenda to use ‘freedom’ to make education more competitive through claims that it correlates with higher test scores and academic success Considers some of the challenges for teachers, educators and students of offering and experiencing freedom in education, and argues that despite these, the case for advancing freedom is both urgent and compelling Creating discussions about the new meaning and role that ‘freedom’ can have in improving education, Reclaiming Freedom in Education is a practical contribution to educational activism, which will be a key point of reference for teachers, parents, researchers and students on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Education Studies, Early Childhood Studies and doctorates.

The Schools Our Children Deserve

The Schools Our Children Deserve
Author: Alfie Kohn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1999
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780618083459

Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.

Don't Go Back to School

Don't Go Back to School
Author: Kio Stark
Publisher:
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2013
Genre: Adult education
ISBN: 9780988949003

A handbook for independent learners based on 100 ethnographic interviews, with guidance, how-to, and interviewee stories.