Introduction : class, race, and gender in educational politics--Textual authority, culture, and the politics of literacy--Postmodernism and the discorse of educational criticism--Cultural politics, reading formations, and the role of teachers as public intellectuals--Border pedagogy in the age of postmodernism--The punishment of disciplines : cultural studies and the transformation of legitimate knowledge--Working-class displacements and postmodern representations--Conclusion : postmodernism as politics--Beyond difference as technological utopianism and cultural separatism.

In this timely book David Steiner argues that democratic education should equip citizens to be "the measure of all things." Questioning, criticizing, and reconstructing the language of the day, dissecting the rhetoric of politics, economy, and culture--these are the skills, Steiner contends, needed by those who will one day be the sovereign voices of our society. But this goal is not the focus of current educational reform--which aims at educating "productive citizens"--nor is it encouraged by democratic theorists in colleges and universities. A Theory of Democratic Education is the first work since John Dewey's to provide a model of education focused on the human capacity to judge and construct a well-measured life--a model in which philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy are brought together in a single, over-arching conception.

A dazzling intellectual treatise on the promise of American culture, education, and democracy by dynamic Renaissance man Leon Botstein, called "an intellectual Bo Jackson" by "The New York Times". Claiming America is stronger than ever, Botstein takes on the cultural pessimists he believes are harming our youth and damaging our democracy.

Perhaps no other historian has had a more profound and revolutionary impact on American education than Howard Zinn. This is the first book devoted to his views on education and its role in a democratic society. Howard Zinn on Democratic Education describes what is missing from school textbooks and in classrooms-and how we move beyond these deficiencies to improve student education. Critical skills of citizenship are insufficiently developed in schools, according to Zinn. Textbooks and curricula must be changed to transcend the recitation of received wisdom too common today in schools. In these respects, recent Bush Administration and educational policies of most previous US presidents have been on the wrong track in meeting educational needs. This book seeks to redefine national goals at a time when public debates over education have never been more polarised--nor higher in public visibility and contentious debate. Zinn's essays on education-many never before published--are framed in this book by a dialogue between Zinn and Donaldo Macedo, a distinguished critic of literacy and schooling, whose books with Paulo Freire, Noam Chomsky and other authors have received international acclaim.

This book opens up a critical conversation among progressive educators of various generations, races, perspectives, and social locations concerning one specific school reform initiative—charter schools. Eric Rofes and Lisa M. Stulberg bring together scholars who both study and actively participate in school choice reform and charge them to be “bold in their questioning and assertive in their own ambivalence” about this complex, controversial public issue and to include issues that are underexamined in the school literature, such as the impact of school choice on race and class politics and inequalities. The editors argue that charter schools are playing a powerful role in reviving participation in public education, expanding opportunities for progressive methods in public school classrooms, and generating new energy for community-based, community-controlled school initiatives. The result is a groundbreaking volume that pushes boundaries, questions assumptions, and rocks foundations of progressive thought.

German professors and academic intellectuals are often blamed for passivity or complicity in the National Socialist rise to power. Karl Mannheim was a leading representative of a vital minority of university personalities who devoted themselves to making sociology and higher education contribute to democratization. Sociology as Political Education is both an analytical account of Mannheim's efforts as well as an illustration of the application of sociological knowledge to the world of practical action. Together with a second biographical volume by the editors, forthcoming next season, it comprisesa complete record of Karl Mannheim in the university life of the Weimar period. The comparatively new discipline of sociology was looked upon with favor by the Weimar Republic's reformers of higher education. In advancing its methods Mannheim had first to contend first with prominent and influential figures who attacked sociology as a mere political device to undermine cultural and national values for the sake of narrow interests and partisanship. He then had to meet the objections of fellow sociologists who were convinced that the discipline could prosper only as an area of specialized study with no claim to educational goals beyond the technical reproduction. Finally, he had to separate himself from proponents of politicized sociology. Sociological thought should be rigorous, critical, and attentive to evidence, but, Mannheim argued, its system had to be open and congruent with the ultimate responsibility of human beings for their acts. Loader and Kettler supplement Mannheim's groundbreaking volume with previously untranslated Mannheim texts, among them a transcript of his 1930 sociology course in which Mannheim answered his critics and clarified his intentions. Sociology as Political Education is not only of historical significance, but also shows Mannheim's relevance for current discussions of academic integrity and politicization. This volume will be of interest to sociologists, cultural historians, and political scientists. Colin Loader is professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. David Kettler is scholar in residence at Bard College and professor emeritus at Trent University. He is the author (with Volker Meja) of Karl Mannheim and the Crisis of Liberalism (available from Transaction).