# data[].attributes.body
Play-based learning is an education style that emphasizes physical play, movement, exploration, and problem solving. Children are given time to play and work independently, which allows them to learn naturally and develop social and emotional skills.

Play-based learning is an education style that emphasizes physical play, movement, exploration, and problem solving. Children are given time to play and work independently, which allows them to learn naturally and develop social and emotional skills. Play-based learning activities can be guided, with help from a teacher or an educational game.

Play-based learning can be a key element of equitable education policy. With some students lacking safe spaces for play at home, incorporating play-based learning in primary education can improve access and offer all children the cognitive and developmental benefits of play-based learning.

# data[].attributes.body
Shows teachers how and why they should bring play into the classroom to make learning meaningful, relevant, and fun. Research studies show that all students―young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural―benefit immensely from classrooms filled with art, creativity, and laughter.

# data[].attributes.body
Standardized testing, along with the multitude of other required testing that compounds each year, has become a way to label students rather than aid them. Additionally, it has become a way to negate teachers and their hard work by dwindling their meaningfulness down to a number.

Allowing students to learn in a multitude of different ways--rather that rote memorization of facts that will not serve them any purposes in the long run.

HANDS ON LEARNING

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

# data[].attributes.body
"Public education is not 'broken.' It is not failing or declining. The diagnosis is wrong, and the solutions of the corporate reformers are wrong. Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation...Public education is in crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it. The solutions proposed by the self-proclaimed reformers have not worked as promised. They have failed even by their own most highly valued measure which is test scores. At the same time, the 'reformers' solutions have had a destructive impact on education as a whole." (Ravitch, p. 23).

Connections made: saving our democracy-->public education, hands on teaching practices-->more prepared certified teachers, NCLB/major test score emphasis--> demise of education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"The most clear-headed and influential critic of privatization is Diane Ravitch, who has earned a reputation as an independent thinker. Refusing to embrace the formulas of left and right, she attacks politically correct speech codes as intelligently as she criticizes the free-market faith in competition. She has also been willing to change her mind in public: at one time an advocate of standardized testing, she is now a skeptic. And this skepticism animates her broader critique in Reign of Error, a book that dispels the clouds of reform rhetoric to reveal the destructiveness of the privatization agenda." -Jackson Lear, Commonweal

"No matter what side of the debate the reader is on, Ms. Ravitch provides a thought-provoking look at some of the major challenges facing public education today." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Those who have grown increasingly alarmed at seeing public education bartered off piece by piece, and seeing schools and teachers thrown into a state of siege, will be grateful for this cri de Coeur-a fearless book, a manifesto, and a cry to battle." -Jonathan Kozol, New York Times Book Review

"Ravtich's critique of the corporate reformers' manufactured agenda, along with the truly progressive alternatives she offers, shows us a way to begin the long haul toward improving democracy's classrooms." -Joseph Featherstone, The Nation

"Diane Ravitch [is] arguably our leading historian of primary and secondary education." -Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books

"Ravitch has emerged as the most consistent and searching critic of the contemporary education-reform movement." -Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs

"No education or social issues library should be without this book." -Diane C. Donovan, California Bookwatch

"The best word I can come up with to describe the Ravitch of today is muckraking - reform-minded journalism that aims to expose misconduct and conspiracy...We need public figures like Ravitch to highlight perilous trends (and illuminate promising trends). . . . Reign of Error is a must-read book." -Sam Chaltain, Education Week

"[Ravitch] presents real solutions, not only to improve our public schools, but also to improve the lives of the children who walk their halls." -Darcie Chimarusti, NewsWorks
"[Ravitch] is a devastating social critic who is well aware of the current political environment. Ravitch is able to skewer this agenda so efficiently because she's seen it all before. . . . Ravitch's candor stands in stark contrast to the bromides of the corporate reformers, who have pretty much left any attempts at integration out of their schemes." -NEA.org (National Education Association)

"Read this book and keep it somewhere within arm's length for the next decade or so." -Jose Vilson, Educator, writer, activist

"Diane Ravitch has emerged as an iconic figure on America's political landscape. What Daniel Ellsberg was to the Vietnam War, Ravitch has become to the battle raging over public education-a truth-teller with the knowledge that comes from decades on the inside of the education 'reform' movement." -Anthony Cody, Education Week Teacher

" Reign of Error is a must-read; brilliant concise and elegant in dissecting and countering the corporate reform myths. . . . You will never find a more succinct and compelling book than Reign of Error, with a crystal clear analysis of the way in which our schools are being driven into the ground by the Billionaire Boys club of Gates, Broad, Walton, Murdoch, and Bloomberg, and other ideologues and opportunists eager to join in. We must win this battle for the soul of our education system before it's too late." -NYC Public School Parent

"Diane Ravitch is America's foremost educational historian. In each chapter Ravitch provides detailed, clear explanations of the relevant data. . . . She is a thorough and careful scholar. As important as her previous book was, Ravitch has outdone that with this magnum opus. This book is by far her finest work, and something which everyone truly concerned about education should read." - Daily Kos

"I advise all public school teachers to read Ravitch's book. Her experience makes her writing rich. Reformers do not like her because she exposes them. . . . Her critics attack her personally because they cannot dent the substance that is Ravitch's Reign of Error. She has pulled their reformer pants down in public. There they stand, red-faced and embarrassed. Ravitch is fighting for us. Buy the book." - The Huffington Post
"I knew a lot about what happened to black public schools in Mississippi, but had concerns about how to go about building a better system. After reading Reign of Error I now know exactly how to proceed. Mississippi is indeed the exception that the whole world believes it to be. I promised God that if I kept living I would spend the rest of my life moving Mississippi blacks from the bottom to the top. Thanks to Diane Ravitch I now know what has to be done." -James Meredith, author of Three Years in Mississippi

"Diane Ravitch is the Martin Luther King and Joan of Arc of American education, a fearless crusader for every American child, parent and teacher. In Reign of Error, she reveals the shocking lack of evidence behind many of the radical experiments being forced on our public school children and families by tragically misguided politicians and non-educators. Most important, she lays out a vision of evidence-based, authentic education reforms that hold great promise for America to lead and inspire the world again. Every American parent, teacher and citizen interested in our future should read this book. What Silent Spring and The Fate of the Earth did for the environmental and antinuclear movements, this book should do for the cause of improving America's public schools." -William Doyle, author of A Soldier's Dream

"Diane Ravitch's must read book makes a compelling case for the essential purpose of public education. She debunks the myths of its failures-and of the market reformers' successes-and points to real doable investments that will make public education the gateway to the American dream for all our children." -Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers

"Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error takes the myths surrounding public education head on and provides her readers with logic and reasoning sorely missing from the current debate. Diane is a fierce warrior against the so-called reformers whose ideology exacerbates the problems of poverty and inequity. Reign of Error takes on each of the common myths and blows them up with the reformers' own holy grail-DATA!! Data that disputes the miracle schools, the effects of poverty and myth of the dropout factors. Ravitch also takes on the Billionaire Boys Club with swipes at their handmaidens of destruction, including Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and Wendy Kopp, and the book provides the solutions that will change the trajectory away from so-called destructive innovation towards equitable, high quality education for all children."
-Karen GJ Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union

"American educational reformers have fashioned a narrative that has become so pervasive that it has effectively silenced alternative accounts. In this courageous book Diane Ravitch persuasively challenges both the narrative's presentation and analysis of data and its underlying value system." -Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education Harvard Graduate School of Education

Get the latest updates about Diane Ravitch

And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.

And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.

Become a Member

Just for joining you'll get personalized recommendations on your dashboard daily and features only for members.

Success!

Your account has been created. Upload book purchases, access your personalized book recommendations, and more from here. GOT IT

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch: 9780345806352 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From one of the foremost authorities on education in the United States, former U.S. assistant secretary of education, an incisive, comprehensive look at today's American school system that argues...

# data[].attributes.body
This novel is an array of different stories brought together to challenge and offer different perspectives of what justice really is.

Takeaways--> we can learn a low when we step into another's shoes to learn through their lens and life experiences.

# data[].attributes.body
"NCLB's requirements for parent notification of school "needs improvement" or "failing" labels and threats of stand dismissal have already been reported as disincentives for qualified staff to stay in high-need schools when they have options to teach in better resourced and better regarded schools with more affluent students" (p. 14).

The social justice aspect of this topic deals with the use of shaming and punishing schools and their faculty. This abuse often leads to negative affects rather than what they are "aiming" for. The only venture resulting from such testing is the notion that all schools are responsible for is preparing students to take tests. As a result of this, teachers are required to "teach the test" which leaves no room for creativity and imaginative exploration.

"The more people see how NCLB actually works, the more it becomes clear that NCLB is not a tool for solving a crisis in public education, but a tool for creating one" (p. 65).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"The more people see how NCLB actually works, the more it becomes clear that NCLB is not a tool for solving a crisis in public education, but a tool for creating one" (p. 65).

In its current form, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) will, undoubtedly, leave many children in its wake. Consequently, it is important for those directly involved with the public educational system to raise everyone's awareness about what such a piece of legislation entails. As it stands, NCLB's current form presents a myriad of potentially-devastating quandaries for public school districts across the United States. Many Children Left Behind's six essays detail the problems presented by NCLB in practice thus far and propose modification to the current legislation that would create a more distinct possibility of actually leaving no child behind.

In their separate chapters, Linda Darling-Hammond and George Wood circumscribe the disparity that exists between the aims and realities of NCLB. In effect, they situate the legislation as a problematic, even antithetical, means to its ends. Darling-Hammond's chapter, "'Separate but Equal' to 'No Child Left Behind': The Collision of New Standards and Old Inequalities", pinpoints how NCLB is misdirected and serves to exacerbate instead of narrow the vast differences in per-pupil spending across public school districts throughout the United States. Though the benchmark tests (used to measure student progress) from NCLB are suppose to serve as a means through which a school is received and treated by the government in regards to funding, the reality is that these tests would better serve schools if they were used to gauge areas in which a school needs the most improvement. Instead, these tests determine whether or not schools make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). According to NCLB, each school must meet yearly projected test scores. Schools that fail to make AYP are allotted three months to generate a corrective plan of action. If these schools continue to fall short of AYP, they face reconstitution, loss of funds, or closure. These measures hardly constitute "fixing" a school. In fact, pressures on "failing" schools are compounded by the fact that the standards that their students must meet are raised each year. By 2014, every student in every school in the United States is projected to score at the "proficient" level on state tests. Schools with diverse populations are expected to make the most significant gains but, as Darling-Hammond posits, the lack of funding for NCLB and its sanctions for "failing" schools prove counterproductive to such a cause:

NCLB's requirements for parent notification of school "needs improvement" or "failing" labels and threats of staff dismissal have already been reported as disincentives for qualified staff to stay in high-need schools when they have options to teach in better resourced and better regarded schools with more affluent students. (p. 14)

Though Darling-Hammond admits that NCLB's aims at shaming and punishing schools might prove successful in some cases, she also offers examples of accountability provisions imposed in various states that have shown that such anticipated results are often not the case. In his chapter, "A View From the Field: NCLB's Effects on Classrooms and Schools", Wood reiterates Darling-Hammond's focus on the misdirection of the NCLB Act:

As a high school principal who also works with schools nationwide, married to a kindergarten teacher, I have experienced firsthand what NCLB leaves behind - and it is the notion that schools have any role aside from preparing our children to take tests. (p. 34)

The question of whether standardized tests are accurate indicators of the quality of education within a school has been under discussion for a long while. However, the advent of NCLB gives unprecedented power to such assumed measurements of quality education. Consequently, schools begin to teach to the test even though standardized tests have never proven to accurately gauge intelligence or the quality of education within a particular school. Wood elaborates by stating that, "there is abundant reason to believe that the skills needed to do well on these tests at best reflect a shallow kind of learning and at worst indicate only a better ability to take tests" (p. 35). Citing various examples of schools subjected to standardized testing, Wood asserts that such accountability measures as those in NCLB only serve to promote student dropout rates and schools pushing out low-performing students. Both Wood and Darling-Hammond suggest that past evidence serves as an admonition to the ineffectiveness of such high-stakes reform efforts and, if not properly addressed, will ultimately result in a multitude of children - most of them the poorest and the neediest - being left behind.

The second section of this book includes chapters by Stan Karp, Deborah Meier, and Alfie Kohn. In their respective essays, they explore the political agendas behind NCLB legislation and the contradictions inherent in the NCLB Act. They also explore NCLB legislation in light of the history of democratic education in this country. According to Karp, a closer examination of AYP reveals its political underpinnings:

But the AYP system is an arbitrary and inappropriate assessment scheme that does not provide an accurate picture of how schools are serving their students, and the sanctions it imposes for low test scores have no record of success as school improvement strategies. These are not educational strategies at all, but political strategies designed to bring a kind of "market reform" to public education. (p. 55)

In his chapter "NCLB's Selective Vision of Equality: Some Gaps Count More Than Others", Karp argues that AYP provides a means through which the privatization of public schools systems may occur. Operating under the facade as being an indicator of the quality of education within specific schools, AYP is way to point a finger at and persuade the public of the ineffectiveness of public schools, thereby creating doubts in the minds of parents as to whether or not they should send their children to such places. Karp believes that if such legislation were truly intended to abolish the achievement gap, its focus would be on properly funding all school districts. Instead, NCLB itself remains under-funded, the per-pupil spending disparity between school districts continues, and standardized tests merely reiterate these facts. In her chapter "NCLB and Democracy", Meier proceeds to show how the NCLB Act boldly goes were no piece of legislation has gone before by exempting power from local and state governments, directing decision-making to the sole discretion of the federal government, and redefining the original articulation of democratic education. Meier states:

The very definition of what constitutes an educated person is now dictated by federal legislation. A well-educated person is one who scores high on standardized math and reading tests. And ergo a good school is one that either has very high test scores or is moving toward them at a prescribed rate of improvement. Period. (p. 67)

In essence, the rights of individuals to have a voice in the schools within their community school systems is completely negated. Instead of trusting local and state governments to ensure the quality of education within their schools, there is an imposition and overpowering of standards-driven mandates passed down from the federal government. According to Meier, there is more autonomy than democracy here. The power to make decisions with regards to the future of education in the United States has been centralized. Kohn's chapter, "NCLB and the Effort to Privatize Public Education", further explores the growing disconnect between the face of contemporary education today and the historical roots of democratic education. He states that in schools today, "there is fresh evidence of how teaching is being narrowed and dumbed down, standardized and scripted - with poor and minority students getting the worst of the deal as usual" (p. 92). Kohn promulgates that in order to truly have an effective democratic education and reverse the negative effects of NCLB, community members must rise up and take an active role in their school systems. More authority and trust must be given to citizens, parents, teachers, and administrators on local boards of education, as they have first-hand experience of their community needs.

Perhaps the most prescriptive essay, in the third section of this book is Monty Neill's "Leaving No Child Behind: Overhauling NCLB". It serves as an effective addressing of critical NCLB issues depicted in the previous essays. In particular, Neill's essay resonates with Kohn's and Meier's essays on the importance of localizing decision-making in education. He states:

Teachers and administrators must be allowed to be professionals, to assume responsibility and thus exercise power to regulate their work as teachers. Parents must be involved in making the key decisions about their children's schooling (and not just choosing the school). Students must be actively engaged in learning to be part of a democratic citizenry and not treated merely as passive recipients of knowledge. (p. 106)

The denial of the opportunity to make decisions that affect the future of one's community leads to further mistrust and disconnect between local, state, and federal governments. Furthermore, when educators teach to the test, students no longer take an active role in their education. Instead, students become passive and pedagogy becomes rote and synthetic. Within the community, the ability of nuclear families to make decisions regarding the academic future of their offspring is weakened by the mandates and standardized assessments imposed by the federal government. To counteract this, Neill suggests that "schools and districts must ensure that all teachers are skilled users of formative assessments. Standardized exams should supplement, not supplant or overpower, classroom assessment" (p. 108). Educators must awaken families to the fact that they can still derive power in their collective voice as taxpayers and stake-holders in public school systems. Neill appeals to the power of the individual - particularly teachers - to institute constructive changes to the NCLB Act. He argues that, "teachers can help mobilize the public to support change. Educators especially need to reach out to parents, who are likely to turn to teachers for information" (p. 117). More than ever, this serves as a critical denotation of the attention that must be paid to the current state of education in the United States.

Many Children Left Behind is an urgent call to educators and civil rights groups to raise the general public's awareness of how their hard-earned tax dollars are supporting a piece of legislation that is potentially detrimental to their public school systems, particularly those schools with diverse populations and students who are considered "at-risk". It is essential that dialogue about concerns over NCLB begin and develop in every community. Such a process begins when teachers and community members organize, hold forums, develop plans of action, and remind tax payers of the undeniable power of their voice when it is raised.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Meier, D., & Wood, G. (Eds.). (2004). Many Children Left Behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act is Damaging our Children and our Schools. Boston: Beacon Press.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"The more people see how NCLB actually works, the more it becomes clear that NCLB is not a tool for solving a crisis in public education, but a tool for creating one" (p. 65). In its current form, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) will, undoubtedly, leave many children in its wake.

# data[].attributes.headline
We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love 

# data[].attributes.subject
We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love 

# data[].attributes.body
Intersectionality: Love expounds on how race, gender, sexuality, religion and class overlap to create different modes of disadvantage and discrimination

Mattering: The humanization of people of color through the lens of society

Education survival-->students cannot be expected to thrive through the constant testing and labeling

Love suggests to abolish the education survival complex and instead create a new educational system based on thriving, civic engagement, and social justice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Editorial Reviews

A useful rejoinder, half a century on, to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; deserving of a broad audience among teachers and educational policymakers."
- Kirkus Reviews

"This text is helpful for gaining a better grasp of oppression and what teachers can do about it."
- Library Journal

"Love's new book is uncategorizable in the best way possible. It is memoir, history, indictment, textbook, guide, and manifesto . . . Educators who aspire to activism will find inspiration in the pages of this book."
- Rethinking Schools

"Offering readers a profoundly fresh perspective on teaching, Bettina Love breaks new ground. Using both the language of critical thinking and radical resistance, this book challenges and dares us all to teach for justice."
-bell hooks

"Through unflinching and daring inquiry, Dr. Bettina Love has stepped out on faith to articulate our pain, suffering, and eternal search for joy. Her words resurrect the abolitionist credo of 'education' over 'school.' Because they are two different things, the question remains: can school be the place where education happens or do we need to radically rethink what we're doing? Dr. Love's work suggests that if we do not choose the latter, we are complicit in our own demise."
-David Stovall, professor of African American studies and criminology, law, and justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, and coauthor of Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools

"This book is exactly what we need: a powerful indictment of our education system as an industry that robs dark children of their potential. Dr. Love challenges us to become abolitionists by holding ourselves and our colleagues accountable for our complicity in perpetuating the 'educational survival complex.' As educators, we must recognize the impact of whiteness on our classrooms, demand the impossible, welcome the struggle, and refuse to oppress dark children by calling out racism, recognizing our students' cultures and histories, and showing them they matter to our communities and to our world. This isn't about reform; it's about freedom, and I'm moving from ally to coconspirator. Every educator needs to read this book, to freedom dream, and to challenge oppression with intersectional justice."
-Mandy Manning, 2018 National Teacher of the Year

"This much-needed book is at once personal, analytic, poetic, exacting, and soaring. Dr. Bettina Love brilliantly weaves, in artisanal and scholarly fashion, the threads and fabric of history, the present, and the possible future. She weaves in a way that we are invited to understand what moving past survival means, in personal, communal, and nation-building ways. This book is a call to building a different future: one made for freedom."
-Leigh Patel, author of Decolonizing Educational Research

"This book is a treasure! With rigorous intersectional theory, careful cultural criticism, and brave personal reflection, We Want To Do More Than Survive dares us to dream and struggle toward richer and thicker forms of educational freedom. With the mind of a scholar and the heart of a revolutionary, Bettina Love has penned a book that places her in the tradition of Freire, Giroux, hooks, and Ladson-Billlings. This beautiful text also affirms her position as one of the leading education scholars of her generation."
-Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond

" We Want To Do More Than Survive is endarkened feminist wisdom in dark times. In the tradition of a skilled kente weaver, Dr. Love brings together abolitionist traditions of educational freedom work with contemporary struggles for Black humanity and creates a stunning tribute to the absolute necessity of joy and love in resistance struggles. What sets this book apart is Love's critical understanding that the splendor of kente is seen not in the weaver's individual efforts or strips of cloth, but instead when those pieces are woven together to illuminate our larger narrative as people of color in community. That narrative of Black freedom dreaming is this book you hold in your hands. And it is a must-read for those who love dark people, who love education, and who love the possibilities of educational freedom as intersectional justice right now."
-Cynthia B. Dillard (Nana Mansa II of Mpeasem, Ghana), Mary Frances Early Endowed Professor of Teacher Education, University of Georgia, and author of On Spiritual Strivings: Transforming an African American Woman's Academic Life

"Bettina Love has managed to write a book that is both a love song to our children and a potent weapon. Part memoir, part manual, part manifesto, We Want to Do More Than Survive explains that abolitionist teaching is neither a new set of standards nor a social justice curriculum, but a revolutionary commitment to transforming ourselves, our country, and the world. Written in breathtaking prose and bold cadences, it reminds us that 'mattering' is a verb, and making sure all of our kids truly matter is unfinished business for which we are all responsible. Educator or not, read this book: it is our North Star."
-Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

From the Publisher

02/01/2019

Following the wave of teachers' strikes in 2018, there has been renewed public appetite for critical discussions of schooling. This is a refreshing development, argues Love (Coll. of Education, Univ. of Georgia), since the discourse around U.S. education reform is often twisted to serve the needs of what the author calls the "educational survival complex"-ultrawealthy philanthropists and their corporate backers who peddle quick-fix solutions such as high-stakes testing or charter schools. Rather than tinkering around the edges of the system in order to ensure the mere survival of children from marginalized communities, Love shows instead how schools can encourage these students to thrive. Unless teachers commit to interrogating and finally shedding their white privilege, she argues, public education will continue to devalue black students and consign them to lives of second-class citizenship. Love could have benefited from firmer editorial control-single sentences routinely stretch on for a hundred words or more. Moreover, she never adequately demonstrates how a critical mass of teachers, already underpaid and overwhelmed, could undertake the community organizing necessary for reform. Still, this text is helpful for gaining a better grasp of oppression and what teachers can do about it. VERDICT Recommended for academic libraries serving preservice teachers. -Seth Kershner, Northwestern Connecticut Community Coll. Lib., Winsted

Library Journal

2018-11-11

An educator and activist issues an urgent call for a pedagogy meant "to eradicate injustice in and outside of schools."

Love (Educational Theory and Practice/Univ. of Georgia) opens with the premise that education "is an industry that is driven and financially backed by the realities that dark children and their families just survive." According to the author, well-meaning volunteers for Teach for America, who spend two years in the inner city, are nothing more than "educational parasites [who] need dark children to be underserved and failing, which supports their feel-good, quick-fix, gimmicky narrative"; slogans and rubrics such as "best practices," "grit," and "No Excuses" are instruments of white supremacy; teachers who claim to "love all children" are often "deeply entrenched in racism, transphobia, classism, rigid ideas of gender, and Islamophobia"; and people who claim that they do not see color, "denying their students' racial experiences, cultural heritage, and ways of resistance," are ipso facto racist. And those are the allies; as for the enemies, well, the language is no less unsparing. Although the argument is sometimes overly strident, Love depicts incontestable realities: Public schools, particularly in poor areas and with students of color, seem designed to fail; strategies such as teaching to the test and the Common Core do little to actually teach anyone anything; and the central lesson of what passes for civic education, as the author writes, is "comply, comply, comply." Against this she proposes a pedagogy of abolitionism-i.e., one that, among other things, fights for social justice, challenges systematic oppression, battles supremacist assumptions, and accounts for the experiences of the marginalized: "Our schools and our teaching practices...need to be torn down and replaced with our freedom dreams rooted in participatory democracy and intersectional justice."

A useful rejoinder, half a century on, to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; controversial but deserving of a broad audience among teachers and educational policymakers.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom|Paperback

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A useful rejoinder, half a century on, to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed; deserving of a broad audience among teachers and educational policymakers."- Kirkus Reviews "This text is helpful for gaining a better grasp of oppression and what teachers can do about it."- Library Journal "Love's new book is uncategorizable in the best way possible.

# data[].attributes.body
At a time when schools and educators are facing a call to move beyond listening and understanding in order to take actionable steps toward living out our missions, Talusan’s novel offers actionable strategies and reflective activities that address real-world challenges and scenarios in our schools.

# data[].attributes.body
The Knowledge Gap focuses on a long-ignored issue lying at the heart of what is known as the achievement gap: the failure of most elementary schools, and especially those serving low-income children, to systematically build knowledge of the world.

# data[].attributes.body
Hass gives detail on how to facilitate meaningful conversations that disrupt the harmful social beliefs and practices we and our students are immersed in every day

# data[].attributes.body
In short, social justice is equal rights and opportunities for ALL..no ifs, ands, or buts.
.
.
.
Social justice in reference to education provides tools to examine the structural features of oppression and our own socialization within unjust systems. It aids in the awareness of injustice in schools, our personal lives, institutions and the society as a whole.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Radical Social Justice Education Through High Fives | Jen Fry | TEDxDuke

# data[].attributes.headline
Social Justice from Teacher Perspective 

# data[].attributes.subject
Social Justice from Teacher Perspective 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Social Justice in Education Documentary Trailer

# data[].attributes.headline
What is Social Justice in Relation to Education? 

# data[].attributes.subject
What is Social Justice in Relation to Education? 

# data[].attributes.body
The phrase social justice is used in school mission statements, job announcements, and educational reform proposals, though sometimes widely disparate ones, from creating a vision of culturally responsive schools to leaving no child behind. The vision, which seems enticing to start, becomes obviously overshadowed with hidden agendas that in no way benefit the child intended on not being left behind.

# data[].attributes.body
Students in the United States come from a variety of family situations, income strata, and cultural backgrounds. As a result, America’s schools are faced with obvious challenges as they strive to provide equal educational  opportunities  to  all  students. Factors such as family income, family  structure, and parents’ education have been shown to  influence a child’s educational opportunities. But who is providing the solution to the challenge? Is it helping or hurting?