In this comprehensive response to the education crisis, the author of Teaching as a Subversive Activity returns to the subject that established his reputation as one of our most insightful social critics. Postman presents useful models with which schools can restore a sense of purpose, tolerance, and a respect for learning.

Postman suggests that the current crisis in our educational system derives from its failure to supply students with a translucent, unifying "narrative" like those that inspired earlier generations. Instead, today's schools promote the false "gods" of economic utility, consumerism, or ethnic separatism and resentment. What alternative strategies can we use to instill our children with a sense of global citizenship, healthy intellectual skepticism, respect of America's traditions, and appreciation of its diversity? In answering this question, The End of Education restores meaning and common sense to the arena in which they are most urgently needed. "Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."--New York Times Book Review

School is a pervasive element in our lives - but one that goes mostly unquestioned. Most discussions get caught up in details of policy reform and leave the idea of school itself alone. The End of School changes that. Offering a radical, but even-handed, look at the purpose of education and the reality of school, Slayback develops a manifesto for how young people, parents, educators, and employers can move beyond school and take control of education. Slayback -- an entrepreneur and Ivy League dropout -- talks about his own disenchantment with school. Despite being an excellent student and loving learning, he became convinced that school was not achieving its end of providing the best education possible. Other students, business partners, intellectuals, and parents convinced him along the way. The End of School is a look -- both theoretical and practical -- at how to fix that. Slayback addresses the book to students, educators, parents, and employers of all stripes and ages. Whether you're a high school or college student, a recent graduate, a parent of a young person, a teacher, or an entrepreneur, you'll want to pick up The End of School. Some of the topics explored include: - The Purpose of Education - The Purpose of School - The Reality of School - Different Types of Schooling - The Effects of Schooling on Your Future - How to Reverse the Negative Effects of Schooling - How to Take Control of Your Education Outside of School - How to Succeed Without a College Degree - Entrepreneurship vs. School as the Ideal Education And more!

This book shows that education constitutes the central metaphor of John Milton's political as well as his poetic writing. Demonstrating how Milton's theory of education emerged from his own practices as a reader and teacher, this book analyzes for the first time the relationship between Milton's own material habits as a reader and his theory of the power of books. Milton's instincts for pedagogy, and the habits of inculcation everywhere visible in his writings, take on a larger political function in his use of education as a trope for the transmission of intellectual history. The book therefore analyzes Paradise Lost in the complementary contexts of its outright educational claims and more subversive countervailing measures in order to show how Milton dramatizes "the end of learning," which is to say both its objective and its failure. The thesis emphasizes the argumentative resourcefulness of Milton's efforts to liberate readers from the tyrannical bonds of their political innocence, most immediately in the context of the failure of Cromwell's regime to establish lasting republican institutions. More philosophically, the book explores the ways in which Milton's works investigate the humane and intellectual yearning for justice in response to the problem of evil.

This book describes the ever-escalating dangers to which Jewish refugees and recent immigrants were subjected in France and Italy as the Holocaust marched forward. Susan Zuccotti uncovers a gruelling yet complex history of suffering and resilience through historical documents and personal testimonies from members of nine central and eastern European Jewish families, displaced to France in the opening years of the Second World War. The chronicle of their lives reveals clearly that these Jewish families experienced persecution of far greater intensity than citizen Jews or longtime resident immigrants. The odyssey of the nine families took them from hostile Vichy France to the Alpine village of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and on to Italy, where German soldiers rather than hoped-for Allied troops awaited. Those who crossed over to Italy were either deported to Auschwitz or forced to scatter in desperate flight. Zuccotti brings to light the agonies of the refugees' unstable lives, the evolution of French policies toward Jews, the reasons behind the flight from the relative idyll of Saint-Martin-Vesubie, and the choices that confronted those who arrived in Italy. Powerful archival evidence frames this history, while firsthand reports underscore the human cost of the nightmarish years of persecution.

Why so few African American and Latino/a students study computer science: updated edition of a book that reveals the dynamics of inequality in American schools. The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low. And relatively few African American and Latino/a high school students receive the kind of institutional encouragement, educational opportunities, and preparation needed for them to choose computer science as a field of study and profession. In Stuck in the Shallow End, Jane Margolis and coauthors look at the daily experiences of students and teachers in three Los Angeles public high schools: an overcrowded urban high school, a math and science magnet school, and a well-funded school in an affluent neighborhood. They find an insidious “virtual segregation” that maintains inequality. The race gap in computer science, Margolis discovers, is one example of the way students of color are denied a wide range of occupational and educational futures. Stuck in the Shallow End is a story of how inequality is reproduced in America—and how students and teachers, given the necessary tools, can change the system. Since the 2008 publication of Stuck in the Shallow End, the book has found an eager audience among teachers, school administrators, and academics. This updated edition offers a new preface detailing the progress in making computer science accessible to all, a new postscript, and discussion questions (coauthored by Jane Margolis and Joanna Goode).

In the wake of the tragedy and destruction that came with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, public schools in New Orleans became part of an almost unthinkable experiment—eliminating the traditional public education system and completely replacing it with charter schools and school choice. Fifteen years later, the results have been remarkable, and the complex lessons learned should alter the way we think about American education. New Orleans became the first US city ever to adopt a school system based on the principles of markets and economics. When the state took over all of the city’s public schools, it turned them over to non-profit charter school managers accountable under performance-based contracts. Students were no longer obligated to attend a specific school based upon their address, allowing families to act like consumers and choose schools in any neighborhood. The teacher union contract, tenure, and certification rules were eliminated, giving schools autonomy and control to hire and fire as they pleased. In Charter School City, Douglas N. Harris provides an inside look at how and why these reform decisions were made and offers many surprising findings from one of the most extensive and rigorous evaluations of a district school reform ever conducted. Through close examination of the results, Harris finds that this unprecedented experiment was a noteworthy success on almost every measurable student outcome. But, as Harris shows, New Orleans was uniquely situated for these reforms to work well and that this market-based reform still required some specific and active roles for government. Letting free markets rule on their own without government involvement will not generate the kinds of changes their advocates suggest. Combining the evidence from New Orleans with that from other cities, Harris draws out the broader lessons of this unprecedented reform effort. At a time when charter school debates are more based on ideology than data, this book is a powerful, evidence-based, and in-depth look at how we can rethink the roles for governments, markets, and nonprofit organizations in education to ensure that America’s schools fulfill their potential for all students.