Public Education PDF Download

Author: David C. Berliner
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807766097
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
"Twenty-eight eminent essayists remind our nations parents, educators, school board members and politicians that our democracy is in jeopardy and that our nation's system of free universal public education is also under attack. If that attack succeeds, American democracy itself would be further imperiled. That is because American democracy rests on a belief that the power of our government comes from the people, and the diffusion of knowledge and the enlightenment of the people has been a cornerstone of our democracy since the founding of our republic. America's public schools, therefore, have a special mandate"--

Author: Robert Asen
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271073144
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
The local school board is one of America’s enduring venues of lay democracy at work. In Democracy, Deliberation, and Education, Robert Asen takes the pulse of this democratic exemplar through an in-depth study of three local school boards in Wisconsin. In so doing, Asen identifies the broader democratic ideal in the most parochial of American settings. Conducted over two years across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, Asen’s research reveals as much about the possibilities and pitfalls of local democracy as it does about educational policy. From issues as old as racial integration and as contemporary as the recognition of the Gay-Straight Alliance in high schools, Democracy, Deliberation, and Education illustrates how ordinary folks build and sustain their vision for a community and its future through consequential public decision making. For all the research on school boards conducted in recent years, no other project so directly addresses school boards as deliberative policymaking bodies. Democracy, Deliberation, and Education draws from 250 school-board meetings and 31 interviews with board members and administrators to offer insight into participants’ varied understandings of their roles in the complex mechanism of governance.

Author: Walter C. Parker
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807776556
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
In Teaching Democracy, Walter Parker makes a unique and thoughtful contribution to the hot debate between proponents of multicultural education and those who favor a cultural literacy approach. Parker conclusively demonstrates that educating for democratic citizenship in a multicultural society includes a fundamental respect for diversity. This scholarly yet accessible work: Bridges the widening gap between multicultural education and civic education.Provides powerful teaching strategies that educators can use to draw children creatively and productively into a way of life that protects and nurtures cultural pluralism and racial equity.Explains the unity–diversity confusion that is found in popular media as well as in multicultural– and citizenship–education initiatives.Defines deliberative discussion and explores its promise as the centerpiece of democratic education in schools, both elementary and secondary. “At a moment in time when our connection to the nation seems superficial and jingoistic, Walter Parker offers us a vehicle to reach our ideal of deliberative, committed civic participation for every citizen. This book explores the hard work of citizen-making in a diverse and complex society where individual and group interests often are in conflict. Parker makes us realize that in a democracy ‘public’ is not a dirty word and schooling should not be punishment.” —Gloria Ladson–Billings, University of Wisconsin, Madison “This book deals in an engaging and thought-provoking way with both social realities and democratic possibilities—exactly what I try to do in my classroom.” —Wendy Ewbank, teacher, Seattle Girls’ School

Author: Steven P. Camicia
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1648023142
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
This book presents a vision of education for democracy built around promoting equity and social justice. In doing so, Camicia and Knowles challenge many of the common perspectives of democratic education, deliberation, and the common good. The authors have published widely on the topic of education for democracy. This book builds upon their work to assist practicing teachers, teacher educators, graduate students, and educational researchers in understanding the background of education for democracy, as well as new directions for the field. While one of the primary goals of public schools is to teach students how to build better communities, this goal is increasingly difficult given the degree of political polarization within societies. Recent events provide no shortage of challenges to democracy in the United States and beyond. Utilizing theory and research, Camicia and Knowles promote instructional methods that are responsive to changing cultural and political contexts. There is an increasing need to rethink democratic principles and how these principles might be supported in classrooms in order to teach for social justice. This requires a move away from often stated idealistic notions of deliberative democracy, toward a perspective of education for democracy that incorporates aspects of identity, interests, and inequitable power relations within society.

Author: Morten Levin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785333224
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Public universities are in crisis, waning in their role as central institutions within democratic societies. Denunciations are abundant, but analyses of the causes and proposals to re-create public universities are not. Based on extensive experience with Action Research-based organizational change in universities and private sector organizations, Levin and Greenwood analyze the wreckage created by neoliberal academic administrators and policymakers. The authors argue that public universities must be democratically organized to perform their educational and societal functions. The book closes by laying out Action Research processes that can transform public universities back into institutions that promote academic freedom, integrity, and democracy.

Author: Johann N. Neem
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423219
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The unknown history of American public education. At a time when Americans are debating the future of public education, Johann N. Neem tells the inspiring story of how and why Americans built a robust public school system in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. It’s a story in which ordinary people in towns across the country worked together to form districts and build schoolhouses and reformers sought to expand tax support and give every child a liberal education. By the time of the Civil War, most northern states had made common schools free, and many southern states were heading in the same direction. Americans made schooling a public good. Yet back then, like today, Americans disagreed over the kind of education needed, who should pay for it, and how schools should be governed. Neem explores the history and meaning of these disagreements. As Americans debated, teachers and students went about the daily work of teaching and learning. Neem takes us into the classrooms of yore so that we may experience public schools from the perspective of the people whose daily lives were most affected by them. Ultimately, Neem concludes, public schools encouraged a diverse people to see themselves as one nation. By studying the origins of America’s public schools, Neem urges us to focus on the defining features of democratic education: promoting equality, nurturing human beings, preparing citizens, and fostering civic solidarity.

Author: Chad Alan Goldberg
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299328902
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
American public universities were founded in a civic tradition that differentiated them from their European predecessors—steering away from the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Like many such higher education institutions across the United States, the University of Wisconsin’s mission, known as the Wisconsin Idea, emphasizes a responsibility to serve the needs of the state and its people. This commitment, which necessarily requires a pledge to academic freedom, has recently been openly threatened by state and federal actors seeking to dismantle a democratic and expansive conception of public service. Using the Wisconsin Idea as a lens, Education for Democracy argues that public higher education institutions remain a bastion of collaborative problem solving. Examinations of partnerships between the state university and people of the state highlight many crucial and lasting contributions to issues of broad public concern such as conservation, LGBTQ+ rights, and poverty alleviation. The contributors restore the value of state universities and humanities education as a public good, contending that they deserve renewed and robust support.

Author: Derek W. Black
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541774388
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The full-scale assault on public education threatens not just public education but American democracy itself. Public education as we know it is in trouble. Derek W. Black, a legal scholar and tenacious advocate, shows how major democratic and constitutional developments are intimately linked to the expansion of public education throughout American history. Schoolhouse Burningis grounded in pathbreaking, original research into how the nation, in its infancy, built itself around public education and, following the Civil War, enshrined education as a constitutional right that forever changed the trajectory of our democracy. Public education, alongside the right to vote, was the cornerstone of the recovery of the war-torn nation. Today's current schooling trends -- the declining commitment to properly fund public education and the well-financed political agenda to expand vouchers and charter schools -- present a major assault on the democratic norms that public education represents and risk undermining one of the unique accomplishments of American society.

Author: Sarah M. Stitzlein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190657391
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Public school systems are central to a flourishing democracy, where children learn how to solve problems together, build shared identities, and come to value justice and liberty for all. However, as citizen support for public schools steadily declines, our democratic way of life is increasingly at risk. Often, we hear about the poor performances of students and teachers in the public school system, but as author Sarah M. Stitzlein asserts in her compelling new volume, the current educational crisis is not about accountability, but rather citizen responsibility. Now, more than ever, citizens increasingly do not feel as though public schools are our schools, forgetting that we have influence over their outcomes and are responsible for their success. In effect, accountability becomes more and more about finding failure and casting blame on our school administrators and teachers, rather than taking responsibility as citizens for shaping our expectations of the classroom, determining the criteria we use to measure its success, and supporting our public schools as they nurture our children for the future. American Public Education and the Responsibility of its Citizens sheds an important light on recent shifts in the link between education and citizenship, helping readers to understand not only how schools now work, but also how citizens can take an active and influential role in shaping them. Moving from philosophical critique of these changes to practical suggestions for action, Stitzlein provides readers with the tools, habits, practices, and knowledge necessary to support public education. Further, by sharing examples of citizens and successful communities that are effectively working with their school systems, Stitzlein offers a torch of hope to sustain citizens through this difficult work in order to keep our democracy strong.

Author: David T. Sehr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780585055336
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Education for Public Democracy identifies two competing traditions of American democracy and citizenship: a dominant; privately-oriented citizenship tradition and an alternative tradition of public democratic citizenship. Based on the second tradition; public democracy, the author outlines a set of qualities an effective democratic citizen must possess, as well as a number of ideal school practices that promote these qualities in young people. This discussion provides a framework for analyzing two democratic urban alternative high schools. The book provides an essential bridge between democratic theory and promising school practices that promote public democratic citizenship. Its insights will be indispensable to teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, and theorists who seek to recreate American education in the service of a revitalized democracy.