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An indictment of the American educational system criticizes the fact that the system has discarded the traditional goals of transmitting knowledge and fostering cognitive skills in favor of building self-esteem and promoting social harmony.
“This book merits every American’s serious consideration” (Vice President Joe Biden): from the Secretary of Education under President Obama, an exposé of the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the expense of our kids’ education, and threatens our nation’s future. “Education runs on lies. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it’s the truth.” So opens Arne Duncan’s How Schools Work, although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some, Not for Others, and Only Now and Then for Kids. Drawing on nearly three decades in education—from his mother’s after-school program on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC—How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests, and even the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun member of President Obama’s Cabinet.” Going to a child’s funeral every couple of weeks, as he did when he worked in Chicago, will do that to a person. How Schools Work exposes the lies that have caused American kids to fall behind their international peers, from early childhood all the way to college graduation rates. But it also identifies what really does make a school work. “As insightful as it is inspiring” (Washington Book Review), How Schools Work will embolden parents, teachers, voters, and even students to demand more of our public schools. If America is going to be great, then we can accept nothing less.
In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.
Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice takes as its starting point a strikingly blunt question: "With so many major structural changes in U.S. public schools over the past century, why have classroom practices been largely stable, with a modest blending of new and old teaching practices, leaving contemporary classroom lessons familiar to earlier generations of school-goers?" It is a question that ought to be of paramount interest to all who are interested in school reform in the United States. It is also a question that comes naturally to Larry Cuban, whose much-admired books have focused on various aspects of school reform--their promises, wrong turns, partial successes, and troubling failures. In this book, he returns to this territory, but trains his focus on the still baffling fact that policy reforms--no matter how ambitious or determined--have generally had little effect on classroom conduct and practice. "For forty years, Larry Cuban has been a voice of thoughtful analysis amid the overwrought rhetoric of American education reform. His distinctive contribution--updated, deepened, and extended in this book--has been to focus our attention on the persistent gap between the misconceptions of policy elites and the realities of daily practice in the classroom. One hopes that the next generation of American educators will learn the essential lessons of Cuban's analysis more deeply than the current generation. Young people considering a career in education should hold the lessons of this book close to their hearts." -- Richard F. Elmore, Gregory R. Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership, Harvard Graduate School of Education "Larry Cuban's well-written book convincingly demonstrates why current education reforms don't work, can't work, and won't work." -- Diane Ravitch, research professor of education, New York University "Anyone with a deep interest in public schools should read Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice. Cuban takes the reader through the history of earnest efforts to improve our schools--through technology, structural reforms, and accountability systems--and shows why they have met with mixed and often disappointing results. His recommendations for us are both cautionary and hopeful, and always respectful of the dilemmas that teachers face each day they walk through the classroom door." -- Gary Yee, board director, District Four, Oakland Unified School District, and retired vice chancellor, Educational Services, Peralta Community College District Larry Cuban is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The American educational system has been declining for years, and it has been made worse by the rise in grade inflation and cheating. #2 American educational deficiencies extend far beyond mathematics. When asked if they thought they were good at mathematics, only 23 percent of American 13-year-olds said yes, compared to 68 percent of Korean 13-year-olds. #3 American students are lacking in knowledge and the ability to tie what they know together to form a coherent chain of reasoning. Many American students seem unaware of the need for such a process. #4 The phrase I feel is often used by American students to introduce a conclusion, rather than say I think, or I know, or even I conclude. This is often considered sufficient by many teachers and students.
Education has to do with the mind and spirit of both the learner and the teacher. Those who teach know this instinctively. Yet many of the processes and mandates required in education, at all levels, fail to consider this most basic condition of the learning environment. Mayes, as an educator and therapist, examines the teaching/learning project through the lens of Depth Psychology because he believes that it offers the best possibility for examining the non-quantifiable dimensions of the student/teacher/ learning situation. Depth Psychology, rooted in the work of Carl Jung, offer the educator a very human and humane way to frame interactions with learners.
Examines the law and politics surrounding the Bakee case; a case claiming reverse discrimnation, considered by many as the most important civil rights decision since the end of segregation.
