E. Wayne Ross - University of British Columbia

E. Wayne Ross - University of British Columbia
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E. Wayne Ross
University of British Columbia
Curriculum & Pedagogy
Faculty Member
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Education
Alumnus
Ohio State University
Educational Policy and Leadership
Alumnus
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I teach and write about the politics of curriculum, critical pedagogy, social studies education, and academic labor.
I am interested in the influence of social, political, and institutional contexts on teachers’ practice. My research and teaching focus on the role of curriculum and teaching in building democratic communities that are positioned to challenge the priorities and interests of neoliberal capitalism as manifest in educational and social policies that shape both formal and informal education experiences.
In recent years, my principal research interests have been the influence of the educational standards and high-stakes testing movements on curriculum and teaching. Investigating the surveillance-based and spectacular conditions of postmodern schools and society my aim has been to develop a radical critique of schooling as social control and a collection of strategies that can be used disrupt and resist the conformative, anti-democratic, anti-collective, and oppressive potentialities of schooling, practices I describe as dangerous citizenship.
I am a co-founder of The Rouge Forum, a group of educators, parents, and students seeking a democratic society and I currently co-edit three scholarly journals: Critical Education;  Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor; and Cultural Logic.
I worked as a secondary social studies (Grades 8 to 12) and day care teacher in North Carolina and Georgia and was Distinguished University Scholar and Chair of the Department of Teaching at the University of Louisville prior to joining the faculty at UBC in 2004. I have also been a faculty member at the State University of New York campuses at Albany and Binghamton.
Phone:
604-822-2830
2125 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6t 1Z4
Canada
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EWR Publications by year
Chronological list of published books, journal articles, book chapters, essays, and reviews by E...
more
Chronological list of published books, journal articles, book chapters, essays, and reviews  by E. Wayne Ross
Books by E. Wayne Ross
The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems and Possibilities (5th Ed.)
The Social Studies Curriculum (5th Ed.)
, 2024
The Social Studies Curriculum (5th Ed.) will be published in 2024 by State University of New York...
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The Social Studies Curriculum (5th Ed.) will be published in 2024 by State University of New York Press.
The Social Studies Curriculum, Fifth Edition updates the definitive overview of the issues teachers face when creating learning experiences for students in social studies. The book connects diverse elements of the social studies curriculum – social issues, history, cultural studies – offering a unique and critical perspective that separates it from other texts. The social studies curriculum is contested terrain both epistemologically and politically and this completely updated book includes new chapters on politics of social studies curriculum, historical perspective, critical historical inquiry, Black education and critical race theory, whiteness and anti-racism, decolonial literacy and decolonizing the curriculum, gender and sexuality, Islamophobia, critical media literacy, evil in social studies, economics education, anarchism, children’s rights and Earth democracy, and citizenship education. Readers are encouraged to reconsider their assumptions and understandings of purposes, nature, and possibilities of the social studies curriculum.
Social Studies in Latin America: Critical Perspectives from the Global South
This book offers a path forward, for the growing collaboration in social studies education betwee...
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This book offers a path forward, for the growing collaboration in social studies education between Global North and South educators, practitioners, and researchers. In this volume, leading critical social studies education researchers from Latin America explore the constant presence of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and state violence. Chapter contributors represent a large part of the continent and offer perspectives on a wide range of topics, including recent history and memory, cultural dimensions of social studies education, and comparative studies among Latin American countries.
By bringing together this critical work in one volume, the book fosters conversation across geographic regions to transcend the national contexts for which these analyses are generally produced. This collection provides insights into issues of curriculum, teaching, teacher education, and research in the region and will be of interest to readers both familiar with and new to research on social studies, history, citizenship, and geography education in Latin America.
Citation: Plá, S., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2023). The new social studies education in Latin America: Critical perspectives from the Global South. Routledge.
ISBN 9781032149509
Published August 30, 2022 by Routledge
214 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
Review of Rethinking Social Studies: Critical Pedagogy in Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship (by Todd Hawley)
by
E. Wayne Ross
and
Todd S. Hawley
Todd Hawley reviews the book "Rethinking Social Studies: Critical Pedagogy in Pursuit of Dangerou...
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Todd Hawley reviews the book "Rethinking Social Studies: Critical Pedagogy in Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship," published February 2018 in Teachers College Record.
Review of Rethinking Social Studies: Critical Pedagogy in Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship (Review by Jesus A. Tirado)
The Journal of Social Studies Research
, 2019
Rethinking social studies: Critical pedagogy in pursuit of dangerous citizenship, E.W. Ross. Info...
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Rethinking social studies: Critical pedagogy in pursuit of dangerous citizenship, E.W. Ross. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC (2017). Paperback $45.99, Hardcover $85.99. ISBN 978-1-68123-755-8
Concerns about the nature and meaning of citizenship have re-emerged in social studies education, research, and academia with new questions about the (dis)function of government, and citizens' continued apathy and lack of participation. E. Wayne Ross addresses some of these concerns over citizenship and lack of engagement in classrooms and society in this latest book.
Rethinking Social Studies: Critical Pedagogy in Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship
Like the schools in which it is taught, social studies is full of alluring contradictions. It har...
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Like the schools in which it is taught, social studies is full of alluring contradictions. It harbours possibilities for inquiry and social criticism, liberation and emancipation. Social studies could be a site that enables young people to analyze and understand social issues in a holistic way – finding and tracing relations and interconnections both present and past in an effort to build meaningful understandings of a problem, its context and history; to envision a future where specific social problems are resolved; and take action to bring that vision in to existence. Social studies could be a place where students learn to speak for themselves in order to achieve, or at least strive toward an equal degree of participation and better future. Social studies could be like this, but it is not.
Rethinking Social Studies examines why social studies has been and continues to be profoundly conversing in nature, the engine room of illusion factories whose primary aim is reproduction of the existing social order, where the ruling ideas exist to be memorized, regurgitated, internalized and lived by. Rethinking social studies as a site where students can develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and recognize they have agency to act on the world, and make change, rests on the premises that social studies should not show life to students, but bringing them to life and that the aim of social studies is getting students to speak for themselves, to understand people make their own history even if they make it in already existing circumstances. These principles are the foundation for a new social studies, one that is not driven by standardized curriculum or examinations, but by the perceived needs, interests, desires of students, communities of shared interest, and ourselves as educators.
Rethinking Social Studies challenges readers to reconsider conventional thought and practices that sustain the status quo in classrooms, schools, and society by critically engaging with questions and issues such as: neutrality in the classroom; how movement conservatism shapes the social studies curriculum; how corporate‐driven education affects schools, teachers, and curriculum; ways in which teachers can creatively disrupt everyday life in the social studies classroom; going beyond language and inclusive content in social justice oriented teaching; making critical pedagogy relevant to everyday life and classroom practice; the invisibility of class in the social studies curriculum and how to make it a central organizing concept; class war, class consciousness and social studies in the age of empire; what are your ideals as a social studies education and how do you keep them and still teach?; and what it means to be a critical social studies educator beyond the classroom.
Working for Social Justice Inside and Outside the Classroom: A Community of Teachers, Researchers, and Activists
What were once distinct professions for serving others and building knowledge are now communities...
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What were once distinct professions for serving others and building knowledge are now communities of workers struggling against a tide of increasingly unregulated capitalism that is being fed by human greed. Teachers have become education workers, joining a working class that is rapidly falling behind and that is increasingly being silenced by the power elite who control nearly all the wealth that once supported a thriving middle class. Working for Social Justice Inside and Outside the Classroom delivers critical counter-narratives aimed at resisting the insatiable greed of a few and supporting the common good for most. The book is dedicated to hopeful communities working against perpetual war, the destruction of our natural environment, increasing poverty, and social inequalities as they fight to preserve democratic ideals in a just and sustainable world. Written by committed scholars, teachers, and activists, this collection is a tapestry of social justice issues woven in and out of formal and informal education.
Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: New Perspectives for Social Studies Education (Sense Publishers; 2010)
by
Abraham DeLeon
and
E. Wayne Ross
Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: New Perspectives for Social Studies ...
more
Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: New Perspectives for Social Studies Education begins with the assertion that there are emergent and provocative theories and practices that should be part of the discourse on social studies education in the 21st century. Anarchist, eco-activist, anti-capitalist, and other radical perspectives, such as disability studies and critical race theory, are explored as viable alternatives in responding to current neo-conservative and neo-liberal educational policies shaping social studies curriculum and teaching.
Despite the interdisciplinary nature the field and a historical commitment to investigating fundamental social issues such as democracy, human rights, and social justice, social studies theory and practice tends to be steeped in a reproductive framework, celebrating and sustaining the status quo, encouraging passive acceptance of current social realities and historical constructions, rather than a critical examination of alternatives. These tendencies have been reinforced by education policies such as No Child Left Behind, which have narrowly defined ways of knowing as rooted in empirical science and apolitical forms of comprehension.
This book comes at a pivotal moment for radical teaching and for critical pedagogy, bringing the radical debate occurring in social sciences and in activist circles—where global protests have demonstrated the success that radical actions can have in resisting rigid state hierarchies and oppressive regimes worldwide—to social studies education.
I have attached an excerpt of the book and have included the website for ordering information. Thank you.
Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education
by
E. Wayne Ross
and
Abraham DeLeon
[Winner of the 2011 “Critics Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]

...
more
[Winner of the 2011 “Critics Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]
"Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: New Perspectives for Social Studies Education begins with the assertion that there are emergent and provocative theories and practices that should be part of the discourse on social studies education in the 21st century. Anarchist, eco-activist, anti-capitalist, and other radical perspectives, such as disability studies and critical race theory, are explored as viable alternatives in responding to current neo-conservative and neo-liberal educational policies shaping social studies curriculum and teaching.
Despite the interdisciplinary nature the field and a historical commitment to investigating fundamental social issues such as democracy, human rights, and social justice, social studies theory and practice tends to be steeped in a reproductive framework, celebrating and sustaining the status quo, encouraging passive acceptance of current social realities and historical constructions, rather than a critical examination of alternatives. These tendencies have been reinforced by education policies such as No Child Left Behind, which have narrowly defined ways of knowing as rooted in empirical science and apolitical forms of comprehension.
This book comes at a pivotal moment for radical teaching and for critical pedagogy, bringing the radical debate occurring in social sciences and in activist circles—where global protests have demonstrated the success that radical actions can have in resisting rigid state hierarchies and oppressive regimes worldwide—to social studies education.
Battleground Schools
by
E. Wayne Ross
and
Sandra Mathison
"[Winner of the 2010 “Critics Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]

...
more
"[Winner of the 2010 “Critics Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]
"No topic sparks an argument faster among the American public, even with relatively apolitical people, than how their children are taught. In schools across the country, school boards, parents, teachers, and students themselves debate issues ranging from charter schools, to the first amendment rights of students, to the efficacy of the No Child Left Behind Act. School districts in Georgia and Pennsylvania have seen battles over the teaching of evolution; places as diverse as Colorado, Washington, and Kentucky have had debates over how best to protect children while at school. Battleground: Schools provides an in-depth, balanced overview of these controversial topics and enables teachers, students, and their parents to better understand the foundations of these conflicts. Battleground: Schools cover the 100 most relevant conflicts involving education issues today. A sample of the debates analyzed:
* Charter schools
* Distance education
* Home schooling
* Students' Rights
* Military in Schools
* Religion and public schools
* Single-sex schooling"""
Education Under The Security State
by
David Gabbard
and
E. Wayne Ross
"This highly acclaimed volume in the Defending Public Schools series is now available in paperbac...
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"This highly acclaimed volume in the Defending Public Schools series is now available in paperback from Teachers College Press. It is a practical, necessary addition to the work of administrators, teachers, policymakers, and parents as they negotiate the difficult path of how to best teach and educate today's children and youth.
"Education under the Security State is a volume that vividly and bravely speaks to the crisis of our age. . . . It examines with analytical suppleness and great political verve contemporary conflicts around educational policy, revealing how both policy and pedagogy have been impacted by the increasing militarization, privatization, and corporatization of the security state as well as shifting dynamics within media culture. What becomes clear in Education under the Security State is that the real threat to the security state is not terrorism but the struggle for democracy."
—From the Foreword by Peter McLaren, University of California, Los Angeles
Contents and Contributors
Introduction: Defending Public Education from the Public, David A. Gabbard • Part I: The Security State and the Traditional Role of Schools • "Welcome to the Desert of the Real": A Brief History of What Makes Schooling Compulsory, David A. Gabbard • The State, the Market, & (Mis)education, Takis Fotopoulos • Part II: Security Threats • What Is The Matrix? What Is the Republic?: Understanding "The Crisis of Democracy", David A. Gabbard • Civic Literacy at Its Best: The "Democratic Distemper" of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), John Marciano • A Matter of Conflicting Interests?: Problematizing the Traditional Role of Schools, Sandra Jackson • Part III: Security Measures: Defending Public Education from the Public • A Nation at Risk—RELOADED: The Security State and the New World Order, David A. Gabbard • The Hegemony of Accountability: The Corporate-Political Alliance for Control of Schools, Sandra Mathison and E. Wayne Ross • Neoliberalism and Schooling in the United States: How State and Federal Government Education Policies Perpetuate Inequality, David W. Hursh and Camille Anne Martina • State Theory and Urban School Reform I: A Reconsideration from Detroit, Barry M. Franklin • State Theory and Urban School Reform II: A Reconsideration from Milwaukee, Thomas C. Pedroni • Cooking the Books: Educational Apartheid with No Child Left Behind, Sheila L. Macrine • The Securitized Student: Meeting the Demands of Neoliberalism, Kenneth J. Saltman • Enforcing the Capitalist Agenda For and In Education: The Security State at Work in Britain and the United States, Dave Hill • Privatization and Enforcement: The Security State Transforms Higher Education, John F. Welsh"
The Nature and Limits of Standards-Based Reform and Assessment
by
E. Wayne Ross
and
Sandra Mathison
"This highly acclaimed volume in the Defending Public Schools series is now available in paperbac...
more
"This highly acclaimed volume in the Defending Public Schools series is now available in paperback from Teachers College Press.
Educational standards and assessment practices are the engine driving the historic changes public schools are experiencing today. This dynamic collection of essays presents an overview of the origins and development of standards-based educational reform (SBER) and assessment; a description of SBER’s essential elements; and a critical analysis of the means and ends of what is perhaps the most important reform effort U.S. schools have ever experienced.
Contents and Contributors
The Nature and Limits of Standards-Based Reform and Assessment, Sandra Mathison and E. Wayne Ross • Part I: History, Context, and the Future of Educational Standards and Assessment • A Short History of Educational Assessment and Standards-Based Educational Reform, Sandra Mathison • Standards-Based Education: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, W. James Popham • The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement, Alfie Kohn • International Comparisons: Worth the Cost?, Gerald W. Bracey • Assessment, Accountability, and the Impossible Dream, Linda Mabry • Authentic Accountability: An Alternative to High-Stakes Testing, Ken Jones • Evaluation of Schools and Education: Bad Practice, Limited Knowledge, Sandra Mathison and Marco A. Muñoz • Part II: Perspectives on Standards and Assessment • Teachers Working with Standards and State Testing, Sandra Mathison and Melissa Freeman • “Parental Involvement”: In Defense of What Kind of Vision for “Public” School? Melissa Freeman • Leaving No Child Left Behind: Accountability Reform and Students with Disabilities, Margaret J. McLaughlin and Katherine M. Nagle • The Accumulation of Disadvantage: The Consequences of Testing for Poor and Minority Children, Sandra Mathison • Educational Leaders and Assessment-Based Reform, William A. Firestone • The Mismeasure and Abuse of Our Children: Why School Officials Must Resist State and National Standardized Testing Reforms, William C. Cala
Neoliberalism and Education Reform
[Winner of the 2008 “Critic’s Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]

...
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[Winner of the 2008 “Critic’s Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]
This book has two primary goals: a critique of educational reforms that result from the rise of neoliberalism, and to provide alternatives to neoliberal conceptions of education problems and solutions. A key issue addressed by contributors is how forms of critical consciousness can be engendered throughout society via schools. This means paying attention to the practical aspects of pedagogy for social transformation and organizing to achieve a most just society. Each contributor offers critical examinations of the pragmatics of pedagogy and organizing for social transformation. It is the editors hope that the analysis of neoliberal educational reform provided in the chapters will contribute in multiple ways to the programs of critical scholars, educators and activists working for education and schools that serve the broad interests of the public and against capitalist educational practices.
Contents: Foreword, Richard A. Brosio. Introduction, E. Wayne Ross and Rich Gibson. Neoliberalism and the Control of Teachers, Students, and Learning: The Rise of Standards, Standardization, and Accountability, David W. Hursh. No Child Left Behind, Globalization, and the Politics of Race, Pauline Lipman. Education and the New Disciplinarity: Surveillance, Spectacle, and the Case of SBER, Kevin D. Vinson and E. Wayne Ross. The Ideology and Practice of Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Education of American Immigrants, Gilbert G. Gonzalez. Neoliberalism and the Perversion of Education, Dave Hill. Schools and the GATS Enigma, Glenn Rikowski. A Marxist Reading of Reading Education, Patrick Shannon. Paulo Freire and the Revolutionary Pedagogy for Social Justice, Rich Gibson. The Unchained Dialectic: Critique and Renewal of Higher Education Research, John Welsh. Marketizing Higher Education: Neoliberal Strategies and Counter-Strategies, Les Levidow. Critical Pedagogy and Class Struggle in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization: Notes from History's Underside. Peter McLaren Author Index. Subject Index.
Marxismo e Educaco
by
E. Wayne Ross
and
David Hursh
"Este livro é sem dúvida um grande contributo à literatura marxista, em geral e à educação marxis...
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"Este livro é sem dúvida um grande contributo à literatura marxista, em geral e à educação marxista, em particular. Em marxismo e Educação, João Paraskeva, Wayne Ross e David Hursh reúnem um conjunto de grandes teóricos, filósofos e investigadores que trabalham actualmente no seio da tradição Marxista situada no ressurgimento humanista das últimas décadas. É uma tradição que tem sabido evitar e, em alguns casos, ultrapassar as problemáticas tradições tangenciais do pós-modernismo, estruturalismo e socialismo burocrático regressando a o Capital informado por um marxismo revolucionário e democrático. Através deste volume, João Paraskeva, Wayne Ross e David Hursh expressam de uma forma bem conseguida as potencialidades da abordagem marxista para a análise da educação na linha do que tem vindo a ser defendido por outros vultos da esquerda educacional como são os casos de Mclaren, Malott, Darder, Hill, Allman, farahmandpour e cole numa luta contra o capitalismo global. Uma obra preciosíssima e de leitura obrigatória, sobretudo numa altura em que as políticas neoliberais não hesitam em continuar o massacre aos mais desfavorecidos - Marc Pruyn - New Mexico State University, Estados Unidos.
Race, Ethnicity, and Education (Volumes 1-4)
by
Valerie Pang
and
E. Wayne Ross
Race, Ethnicity and Education moves beyond traditional thinking and approaches to multicultural e...
more
Race, Ethnicity and Education moves beyond traditional thinking and approaches to multicultural education to more accurately reflect the dramatically changing circumstances faced by North American schools in an age of globalization. The volumes address ways in which race and ethnicity affect learning across the life span, at all levels of formal education as well as in informal educational settings. Issues of school curriculum, instruction, and administration are examined. These volumes aim to address both the foundational assumptions and the practices of education in relation to changing conceptions of race and ethnicity.
Volume 1
Principles and Practices of Multicultural Education
Edited by Valerie Ooka Pang
Volume 2
Language and Literacy in Schools
Edited by Robert T. Jiménez and Valerie Ooka Pang
Volume 3
Racial Identity in Education
Edited by H. Richard Milner and E. Wayne Ross
Volume 4
Racism and Antiracism in Education
Edited by E. Wayne Ross
Volume One, Principles and Practices of Multicultural Education, examines issues of equity, school reform, teacher education, and school leadership. Volume 2, Language and Literacy in Schools, presents an overview of language and literacy learning for Latino and Asian American students, and gives general and specific recommendations for improved performance. The third volume, Racial Identity in Education, examines concepts of racial and ethnic identity and how they affect teaching and learning. The final volume, Racism and Antiracism in Education, looks at "color-blind racism;" "white supremacy" in the curriculum; race and testing; critical race pedagogy and anti-racist education; and globalization. Outstanding scholars contributing to this timely collection include: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva; George J. Sefa Dei; Donna Y. Ford; Vivian Gadsden; Carl A. Grant; Edmund W. Gordon; Joyce E. King; and Kevin K. Kumashiro.
Race, Ethnicity and Education: Racism and Antiracism in Education (REE Volume 4)
Race, Ethnicity and Education (Vols 1-4)
General Editors: E. Wayne Ross and Valerie O. Pang.

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more
Race, Ethnicity and Education (Vols 1-4)
General Editors: E. Wayne Ross and Valerie O. Pang.
Volume 1
Principles and Practices of Multicultural Education
Edited by Valerie Ooka Pang
Volume 2
Language and Literacy in Schools
Edited by Robert T. Jiménez and Valerie Ooka Pang
Volume 3
Racial Identity in Education
Edited by H. Richard Milner and E. Wayne Ross
Volume 4
Racism and Antiracism in Education
Edited by E. Wayne Ross
Defending Public Schools (Volumes 1-4)
by
E. Wayne Ross
Sandra Mathison
, and
Kevin D. Vinson
Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public educatio...
more
Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public education in the United States. While the essays provide an overview of education and schooling issues, the overarching concern is that public schools are under attack and deserve to be defended. Since 80% of America's student-aged population attend public schools, a fair and balanced look at a school system that has educated and continues to educate a population that is diverse in every way possible, is sorely needed. It can be said that a national school system has never had to educate so many young people through secondary school with mastery of so much information. While no one rejects the necessity of school reform to meet contemporary needs, the question of how to achieve the greatest good for the greatest numbers remains for thousand of schools across the nation. Defending Public Schools is a practical, necessary addition to the work of administrators, teachers, policy makers, and parents as they negotiate the difficult path of how to best teach and educate today's children and youth.
Defending Public Schools: Education Under the Security State (DPS Volume 1)
by
E. Wayne Ross
and
David Gabbard
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, with...
more
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: t/k ISBN: 0-275-98295-5 (set) 0-275-98296-3 (vol. I) 0-275-98297-1 (vol. II) 0-275-98298-X (vol. III) 0-275-98299-8 (vol. IV)
Defending Public Schools: Teaching for a Democratic Society (DPS Volume 2)
[Winner of the 2006 “Critics Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]

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more
[Winner of the 2006 “Critics Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association]
Defending public schools, as we propose to do in the pages of this book, does not mean that one must be a cheerleader for all that currently goes on in schools.  As Herb Kohl says, “It is possible to defend public education without having to defend the public schools as they currently exist.”  Public intellectuals, including teachers, have a responsibility to act as cultural critics, bringing attention to the ways in which schools are not realizing their democratic ideals and helping the broader public understand the complicated connections between schooling and the crisis in democracy.  In addition to offering critique, educators also have a responsibility to instill hope and offer up alternative visions of potential futures.  We have tried to live up to these responsibilities in these pages; while highlighting the despair that is causing too many fine teachers to leave the profession, and offering penetrating critique of the conditions that are causing this, we place alongside this critique multiple ...
Defending Public Schools: Curriculum Continuity and Change in the 21st Century (DPS Volume 3)
by
E. Wayne Ross
and
Kevin D. Vinson
One point—if not the point—of this book is to defend public schools against the vast array of cur...
more
One point—if not the point—of this book is to defend public schools against the vast array of current criticism—from both the Right and the Left—and whether or not there are any real, meaningful differences (at least between traditional conservatives and liberals) in their various complaints and their variously construed and effected results. As such, the chapters in the volume address a multiple range of contemporary concerns relative to American public schooling and education.
Defending Public Schools: Curriculum and the Challenge of Change aims to support public schools specifically with respect to the curriculum as it exists, and could or should exist, today. Although critical, the authors here generally indeed are critical principally via the conditions and limitations imposed on schooling by those who control its complex and power-laden (post)modern functionings (e.g., governments, corporations), and not of public schooling—overarchingly—and/or its underlying and productive ideals per se. That is, although we know, of course, that not all teachers are good teachers and not all the curricular and instructional decisions they make are good decisions, we still support their continuing and remarkable efforts—as well as those of parents, students, and administrators—especially as they strive to do their very and underappreciated best under frequently less than optimal, and/or even less than supportive, circumstances (to say, in our view, the least).
To this end, each chapter included in this volume incorporates a number of related ideas and addresses several connected and timely themes. The authors all, for instance, offer a critique of the contemporary state of public schooling. While, initially, this might seem rather incompatible or inconsistent with the goal of defending public schools, in fact it really is not. For in each case the authors advance a discussion of both positive and negative characteristics, and do so with the knowledge and optimism that education—particularly the curriculum—can, and should, be better. Certainly we—teachers, our children, and society at large—deserve nothing less.
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