Education Commons^™

The Privatization Movement Is Not Dead! A Book Review Of A Wolf At The Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling Of Public Education And The Future Of School, Jeffrey Frenkiewich

Democracy and Education

In January of 2020, Diane Ravitch published Slaying Goliath, in which she claimed the movement to privatize America’s public school system was dying. While this might be true, the movement is not dead, and this review looks at Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire’s A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, which examines the history of school privatization and calls for renewed vigilance by those who oppose it. Schneider and Berkshire argued that defenders of public education need three conceptual frames to fight privatization efforts: (a) a clear presentation of the aims and objectives of the privatization movement; (b) knowledge of the …

Middle School Mathematics Teachers’ Efforts To Foster Classroom Democracies. A Response To "Creating A Democratic Mathematics Classroom", Amanda Jansen, Lorianne Kalb, Denise Mccunney

Democracy and Education

How can middle school mathematics teachers navigate their roles as authorities in managing classroom democracies while providing their students with opportunities to exercise their rights? The concept of complementarity (Vithal, 1999) acknowledges that a teacher’s authority is not always in conflict with students’ rights or agency, but instead a teacher’s authority can be exercised judiciously to invite students to enact their rights. In this response to “Creating Democratic Mathematics Classrooms,” we take up the authors’ invitation to reflect on how we consider the role of responsibilities in classrooms that promote Torres’s Rights of the Learner. We share ways that two …

How Teaching Virtues Became A Movement. A Book Review Of The Rise Of Character Education In Britain: Heroes, Dragons, And The Myths Of Character, Judith L. Pace

Democracy and Education

How did character education become so popular? What does its curriculum look like? And what is its educational impact? Lee Jerome and Ben Kisby answer these and other questions in a bold and brilliant book. Focusing on the character education movement in Britain, they dissect its theoretical foundation, explain its ascendancy, analyze its curricula, and examine its results. The authors construct a compelling argument that character education clashes with education for democracy.

Character education claims to be a panacea for improving individual children’s life chances as well as an array of societal problems. But with its deeply flawed ideology, curricula, …