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Politics of Education

• "Sex", "Race" and Multiculturalism: Critical Consumption and the Politics of Course Evaluations
  Calls attention to the difficulties of broaching issues of "race" and "sex" in the classroom context of nationwide calls for multiculturalism. Discusses the current politics surrounding the importance of student course evaluations, and presents strategies for making evaluations more useful in the context of courses that include controversial material.
• "The Politics of Multiculturalism and Bilingual Education: Students and Teachers Caught in the Cross Fire," by C. J. Ovando and P. McLaren (2000). Book Review
  Reviews an anthology that provides undergraduate and graduate students with theoretical and practical discussion on various ideological convictions in the fields of multiculturalism and bilingual education. Discusses theoretical conflicts and ideologies affecting the field of multiculturalism, and the more immediate effects of politics on teaching and learning in schools.
• A Two-Way Bilingual Program: Promise, Practice, and Precautions
  In spite of political pressure, bilingualism is emerging as a strategy for improving the academic achievement of all students. Two-way bilingual or dual-language programs integrate language-minority and language-majority students for instruction in two languages.
• Adult ESL: Politics, Pedagogy, and Participation in Classroom and Community Programs
  The collection of essays on the politics of adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction includes Adult Education,Community Programs English (Second Language),Information Technology,Literacy Education.
• Adult ESL: Politics, Pedagogy, and Participation in Classroom and Community Programs
  The collection of essays on the politics of adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction are onAdult Education Community Programs,information Technology,Politics of Education etc.
• Americanization and the Schools
  Argues that a common mainstream American culture (a system of common knowledge and root attitudes as well as the English language) should take precedence in the schools over attempts to enforce multiculturalism and bilingualism, which only deepen the disadvantage of the children of the unassimilated. (SR).
• Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy
  Academic achievement of historically oppressed groups is affected by the societal power relations reproduced in schools and by the "deficit" perspective. Culturally responsive education and strategic teaching are humanistic approaches that respect and use the culture, history, and perspectives of the students in educational practice.
• Bilingual Education: Beyond Linguistic Instrumentalization
  Examines potential ways to view bilingual education in a more liberatory perspective. Summarizes the global, historical context of bilingual education, and outlines principles and features of six models of formal bilingual education.
• CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights
  Recounts the activist history of the Conference on College Composition and Communication in working toward a more democratic valuing of language diversity by both teachers and the public. Focuses on two organizational policies of CCCC, the "Students' Right" resolution of 1974 and the "National Language Policy" of 1988, incorporating articles and commentaries on language from this journal.
• Chicano Studies at Metro State College of Denver: Suggestions for Proactive Strategies
  This paper overviews the development and present status of the Chicano Studies Department at Metro State College of Denver (MSCD). At its inception during the 1960s, Chicano Studies were viewed as a means of destroying the racist and imperialist mentality toward Chicanos and promoting Chicano power and freedom.
• Chicano Studies at Metro State College of Denver: Suggestions for Proactive Strategies
  This paper overviews the development and present status of the Chicano Studies Department at Metro State College of Denver (MSCD). At its inception during the 1960s, Chicano Studies were viewed as a means of destroying the racist and imperialist mentality toward Chicanos and promoting Chicano power and freedom.
• Controlling Curriculum Knowledge: Multicultural Politics and Policymaking
  Utilizes New York state's development and attempted implementation of multicultural education as a case study providing a concise yet thorough examination of the principles, objectives, and controversies surrounding this issue. Delineates the people and organizations involved in grass roots organizing and media representation on both sides of the issue.
• Critiquing Whole Language and Classroom Inquiry. WLU Series
  This book, part of the Whole Language Umbrella Series, offers a critical reexamination of "inquiry" and "whole language" as tools for rethinking literacy, schooling, and humanistic citizenship in the complexities of today's multicultural world. The essays in the book explore the political implications of literacy theories and practices by asking what kinds of inquiries promote or hinder the acquisition of literacies as tools for envisioning, critically exploring, and reconstructing knowledge and societies that are socially just.
• Education. CUNY Panel: Rethinking the Disciplines. Women in the Curriculum Series
  This collection of four essays examines the ways in which education, as a discipline, currently reflects ongoing scholarship on gender, race, ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation. In "Teacher Education and Multicultural Education: Research, Students, and Teaching" Carl A.
• ESL Policy and Practice: A Linguistic Human Rights Perspective
  Finds that the reading performance of English-as-a-second-language students and English language learners immersed in regular education classes in a large urban school district was far below grade-level performance, across all categories of measurement; but that the performance of English language learners who had successfully exited from bilingual classes was consistently within or above the average range of performance. (SR).
• Focus on Human Rights
  Maintains that educators have been at the forefront in the quest for equal opportunity. Asserts, however, that there is resistance to recognizing and removing bias from the curriculum and instructional materials.
• From Boarding Schools to the Multicultural Classroom: The Intercultural Politics of Education, Assimilation, and American Indians
  Examines American Indian perspectives about public education in the United States, discussing practices that still work to eradicate all traces of their resident cultures. Focuses on the politics of intercultural communication in the academy via a historical and contemporary analysis of American Indians as subjects, objects, and practitioners in the U.S.
• From Moral Duty to Cultural Rights: A Case Study of Political Framing in Education
  Addresses questions about how old social causes get revived, and how small, politically insignificant interest groups mount viable campaigns against dominant political views. Examines the strategies of two multifaith religious coalitions in Ontario, Canada, that are gaining political ground by reframing traditional arguments for religious schooling as multicultural issues.
• Issues of Discrimination in European Education Systems
  Examines difficulties and complexities in researching issues of discrimination in education across European countries as a first step in devising intercultural curricula. Discusses cross-national differences in terminology, in the ways in which research issues related to racism and interculturalism are formulated, and in the educational experience of children of immigrant and ex-colonial groups.
• Literacies of Inclusion: Feminism, Multiculturalism, and Youth
  Feminist and multicultural practices in public education can help achieve cultural inclusiveness. The paper examines multiple literacies and literacy learning in culturally diverse and gender fair schools, suggesting whole language programs, reader-response criticism, and feminism to expand the educational canon and ensure a public education representing the politics of inclusion.
• Multicultural Literature and the Politics of Reaction
  Examines the conservative response to the movement for multiculturalism as manifested in the case of children's literature, exploring the challenges posed to those concerned with creating, producing, distributing, and consuming children's literature. The paper also explores authorship of multicultural books, discussing the freedom of writers to write without restriction.
• Multiple Definitions of Multicultural Literature: Is the Debate Really Just "Ivory Tower" Bickering?
  Argues that controversy over the definition of multicultural literature is focused on how many cultures should be covered. Identifies and discusses three key definitions that raise fundamental sociopolitical issues and have differing implications for how multicultural literature is incorporated into the curriculum.
• New Perspectives on Multiculturalism in Education
  Advocates moving multicultural education beyond ethnic awareness into a more theoretical and constructive phase. Argues for incorporating epistemological theories regarding the subjectivity of knowledge with an awareness of the interdependence of different cultures.
• Poststructuralism, Politics, and Education. Critical Studies in Education and Culture
  This book provides an introduction to poststructuralism by examining a range of interrelated themes central to the field of education that focus on the critique of reason and the problematic nature of the subject. The first chapter examines the history of poststructuralism in terms of the broader canvas of European formalism, futurism, surrealism, and structuralist poetics.
• QCA and the Politics of Multicultural Education
  Suggests that Britain's QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) has not taken responsibility for an anti-racist approach to curriculum or pedagogy. Instead, this has been left to individuals and local authorities.
• Raising Achievement for Asian Pupils
  Analyzes why ethnic minority groups, such as Asians, are achieving marginal academic success. Analysis of the management, pedagogic, curriculum, resource, and community issues indicates what political guidance might be effective to help improve academic achievement.
• Resisting the Pendulum Swing: Informed Perspectives on Education Controversies
  Designed to offer more than slogans and buzzwords to practitioners who are grappling with an array of education controversies, this book provides classroom teachers with a spectrum of information about current controversies so that they will be better equipped to blend action with reflection. The book deliberately resists extremes and argues for less contentious points of view.
• Seeking Ethnocultural Equity through Teacher Education: Reforming University Preservice Programs
  Argues that Canadian schools of education must address social justice issues of ethnicity, culture, and racism; model equitable practices in teacher education programs; and promote equity for all students in public schools. Reviews current debate on multicultural and antiracist education, challenges in pursuing equity in education, and promising preservice programs providing specific direction for reform.
• Shameful Admissions. The Losing Battle To Serve Everyone in Our Universities
  This book uses an examination of admissions policies, especially affirmative action, at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), to explore higher education and its role in public debates about access, equality, and social change.
• Surviving School Reform: A Year in the Life of One School
  This book tells the story of one year in the life of Jefferson Elementary School (pseudonym for a real school), which was selected to participate in the state's "School for the Twenty-first Century" program. The faculty and principal proposed to build a developmental community school based on the following components: whole language, cooperative learning, multicultural education, an integrated curriculum, multiage grouping, technology, and mainstreaming of special-needs children.
• Teaching Multicultural Social Studies in an Era of Political Eclipse
  Recommends that teachers combine multicultural education with an inquiry-based approach to social studies to help students critically examine society. Addresses the different obstacles when adopting this approach and offers an example of the inquiry method at work.
• The Academic Language Gap
  Discusses reasons for the deep resistance students feel about assuming the role of self-conscious intellectualizer and contentious argument-maker that is demanded by academic courses. Argues that educators will miss the point if, in their dwelling on texts, canons, and political philosophies, they ignore or romanticize this resistance.
• The Color of Bureaucracy: The Politics of Equity in Multicultural School Communities
  This book is for administrators, teachers, policymakers, educational reformers, and community leaders who are concerned with achieving greater social justice in education. It provides an in-depth understanding of the challenges to schools brought about by lingering views of race, gender, ethnicity, and class, showing how the inequalities of the country's past are unconsciously maintained through inherited systems of bureaucratic control.
• The Educational Politics of Identity and Category
  Strikes a new educational path through the politics of identity and multiculturalism by arguing for the need to equip young people with an understanding of how culture, race, and nation have been constructed. The paper discusses two multicultural and antiracist initiatives in Canada and examines the beliefs and politics of Simone Weil, Charles Taylor, Neil Bissoondath, and Arthur Schlesinger.
• The New Spongiform University
  The great works of Western civilization, long held up to college students as models of human achievement, are rapidly being replaced by trivia and by multicultural and poststructural studies. With the growth of postmodern studies has come a decline in broad-based core requirements.
• The Politics of Multicultural Education in South Africa: Vogue, Oxymoron or Political Paralysis
  Argues against using American-style multicultural education in South African higher education and suggests that transitory nation-states would first need to adopt Africentric reformism in order to recapture their value system before incorporating multiculturalism into the curriculum. The relevance of the multicultural model to South Africa and why its implementation should be deferred is discussed.
• The Politics of Multiculturalism and Bilingual Education: Students and Teachers Caught in the Crossfire
  This article contains essays on political issues in multicultural and bilingual education.
• The Politics of Multiculturalism and Bilingual Education: Students and Teachers Caught in the Crossfire
  Essays on political issues in multicultural and bilingual education include Bilingual Education,Diversity (Student),Language Role,Multicultural Education,Politics of Education, Asian Americans,Comparative Analysis,Culture Conflict,Foreign Countries,International Education.
• Unity in Diversity: The Enigma of the European Dimension in Education
  Maintains that efforts aimed at the development of a European dimension to the general education curriculum offered in individual nations' schooling have increased in recent years. Asserts that the immediate goal is to provide young people with opportunities beyond their national borders.
• Walking on Eggs: Mastering the Dreaded Diversity Discussion
  Nine strategies for opening and sustaining discussion of cultural pluralism in the college classroom are offered, including use of powerful evocative quotations, evocative visuals, student self-identification in cultural terms, pictographic autobiographies, student personal narratives, metaphors for America, concentric identity circles exercise, models for interpreting cultural experience, and paired readings. Guidelines for discussion management are also given.
• White Noise: The Attack on Political Correctness and the Struggle for the Western Canon
  Reviews debates about political correctness, multiculturalism, and the Western Canon in education, analyzing why the Canon needs defending and what it says about education. The paper describes flaws in the arguments of those attacking political correctness and defending the Canon, suggesting that the case for multiculturalism and diversified curriculum needs substantial strengthening to be feasible.
• Why Standardized Tests Threaten Multiculturalism
  Oregon's statewide social-studies assessment (a randomized, multiple-choice maze) is part of a "democratic" national standards movement that threatens good teaching and multicultural studies. If multiculturalism's key goal is accounting for historical influences on current social realities, then Oregon's standards and tests earn a failing grade.