Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming Our Schools: Reversing Privatization and Recovering Democracy in America's Public Schools

by Eric Shyman Professor of Special Education, Dowling College, NY

Overview

Reclaiming Our Children,Reclaiming our Schools offers both a comprehensive censure of the current corporate interest in privatizing public schooling as well as a framework for attaining meaningful education reform based in democracy and the combined will of the public. Using current research and sound philosophical and ethical arguments, Shyman argues for more attention to be paid to teacher expertise, participatory democratic practices, genuine valuation of ethnic and cultural diversity, attention to global citizenship and cooperation, and the prevention of private profit-based interests in public schooling policy and practice. By returning the power of the public school to the public and the true experts, public schools can become the most important tool in securing genuine cultural growth leading to a stronger, safer and more cooperative nation and world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475829891
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/20/2016
Pages:	154
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.36(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Eric Shyman is an assistant professor of Child Study at St. Joseph’s College on Long Island, New York. He received his doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 - How We Got Here: Education Reform in a Nutshell
Chapter 2 - Meeting the Real Standards: Assimilation and the Middle Class Ethic
Chapter 3 - Public Peril and Corporate Promise: Civil Rights, School Choice and the Panacea of Privatization
Chapter 4 - One Nation Under Corporatization: The Government and The Lucrative Neoliberal Market
Chapter 5 - Building a Foundation for Fabrication: The Rise of the Charter School and Its Tacit Failure to Deliver
Chapter 6 - Local Kids, Local Control: Crafting the Decentralization of Schooling Across the World
Chapter 7 - Real Value Added: Truly Respecting Teachers and Educationists in Education Reform Policymaking
Chapter 8 - Appreciation, Education, Innovation: The Finnish Example of Teacher Preparation and Training
Chapter 9 - Power without Dominance: The Governance of Schools through Democratic Participatory and Expert Decision Making Processes
Chapter 10 - Letting the Teachers Teach: Nurturing Respect and Trust For Teachers and the Teaching Profession
Chapter 11 - Citizenship: A Local and Global Necessity for a True Value to Schooling
Chapter 12 - A Place for Everyone: Culturally Responsive Teaching
Chapter 13 - Real Partnerships, Real Choice: Uniting Students, Teachers, and Parents to Effect Genuine Community Investment
Chapter 14 - Building the School to Society Pipeline: A Strong Public School System as an
Alternative to Mass Incarceration
Chapter 15 - The Parameters of Earnestness: Essential Elements for True Change
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

In this concise and riveting analysis of public schooling, Eric Shyman powerfully makes the case for true education reform. With the level of honesty and clarity of thought desperately needed to address the crisis of American education, Shyman takes the reader through a series of stimulating arguments as he lays out a plan for socially just educational reform. In so doing, he shows us how we might reclaim not only our children, but our democracy. Shyman's handbook for the transformation of education is essential reading for anyone who cares about our children and the schools who shape them.

Robin DiAngelo

Timely and provocative, this book traces the private takeover of American public schools, a movement that has sacrificed the democratizing potential of public education and exacerbated the academic and social wellbeing of children from marginalized groups. Going beyond critique, Eric Shyman offers an inspiring and comprehensive plan of action that calls for reclaiming public schools by decentralizing control of education, elevating the role of teachers in educational decision-making, promoting culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, and adopting a curriculum that nurtures global citizenship. Reclaiming our children, Reclaiming our Schools is a must-read for parents, teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, and others committed to making schools democratic and just.

Ana María Villegas

Timely and provocative, this book traces the private takeover of American public schools, a movement that has sacrificed the democratizing potential of public education and exacerbated the academic and social wellbeing of children from marginalized groups. Going beyond critique, Eric Shyman offers an inspiring and comprehensive plan of action that calls for reclaiming public schools by decentralizing control of education, elevating the role of teachers in educational decision-making, promoting culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, and adopting a curriculum that nurtures global citizenship. Reclaiming our children, Reclaiming our Schools is a must-read for parents, teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, and others committed to making schools democratic and just.

Ana María Villegas

In Reclaiming our Children, Reclaiming our Schools Eric Shyman offers a sweeping, critical analysis of the privatization of public education in the United States while providing concrete examples of more democratic, equitable solutions from around the world. Concise and sharply written, Reclaiming our Children is a perfect book for anyone who wants to both understand the regressive politics of neoliberal, corporate education reform and envision something better. 

Wayne Au

In unearthing the current myths about educational reform, Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming our Schools offers a realistic alternative vision for change based on an accurate and insightful analysis of the ways that racial and economic oppression shape the situation of urban schools.  Further, it lucidly and passionately reimagines the transformation of schools through actually lived lives of Black and Brown students and the ideas and desires of those who truly care about them.  

Ricky Lee Allen