Article Abstracts:
Reviews of Current Books (Full-Text):
-- by Stanley Aronowitz
In this article, Stanley Aronowitz argues that "American" ideology contains two elements. First, the United States is believed to confer equality of opportunity on each citizen. Second, unlike other advanced industrial nations, the United States is considered an "open society" that allows and promotes social mobility. In this paradigm, racial minorities and women have the same chances to escape the ranks of the working poor as White men. Aronowitz uses a class-based analysis nested within ethnicity to expose the fallacy of this ideology. Since higher education is most often pointed to as a source of social mobility, Aronowitz focuses his argument on the meritocratic norms that are replacing democratic norms within higher education, and on the devolution of educational opportunity for the poor, working class, and racial minorities.
-- by Juan Flores
In this article, Juan Flores provides a historical and theoretical context for the study of Latino ethnicities. Presently, Latino Studies is at a paradoxical crossroads. While students at elite private colleges are clamoring for such programs, many public colleges and universities are cutting and consolidating Latino Studies programs virtually out of existence. As the battle to create, or preserve, Latino Studies departments rages on, the author points out the theoretical transformations that have occurred over the past twenty five years. One of the biggest differences between past university movements and present ones is the manner in which the demands have been framed by students. Very few of the earlier student mobilizations called for "Latino Studies" per se; rather, the early initiatives, which usually called for "Puerto Rican Studies" or "Chicano Studies," corresponded more directly to the political struggles for justice located within particular Chicano and Puerto Rican communities. This change in the framing of Latino Studies coincides with the more transnational and global character of Latino ethnic groups. In addition, the theoretical insights provided by feminist, post-colonial, and race theorists, as well as lesbian and gay studies, have added a level of complexity that was not present in the early days of Chicano or Puerto Rican studies. Flores concludes with a call for an opening of the theoretical space within Latino Studies curricula, and the universities that house them, to allow room for these new complexities, thereby taking advantage of a unique moment in the history of Latino Studies.
-- by Lilia I. Bartolomé and Donaldo P. Macedo
By analyzing issues and messages in the mass media and recent news events, Lilia Bartolomé and Donaldo Macedo further the political discussion that problematizes the current discourse in education around ethnicity and race. The authors' discussion moves us beyond the monolithic constructs of Whiteness and "otherness" to recognize the complex interpenetrations and dynamics of ethnic and racial relations in the United States. In this article, the authors reveal how the politics of racism and division do not belong solely to extremist hate groups, but are an unacknowledged and potent part of mainstream American ideology, thought, and action. They provide examples of state and Congressional political figures and national mass media personalities to make their argument concrete.
-- by Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, and Linda C. Powell
In this article, Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, and Linda Powell juxtapose three different school communities and the schools' various approaches to dealing with differences among their students. They use notions of equal status contact theory, supplemented by three literatures -- those of community, difference, and democracy, to discuss three desegregated spaces on a continuum, from one in which racial differences are unquestioned and racist discourse uninterrupted by faculty or staff to one in which teachers are actively working toward creating a space where differences are acknowledged and respected. Through this contrasting of desegregated spaces, the authors challenge readers to "imbalance privilege, incite community, to both value of pluralize difference" -- to create teaching and learning spaces that nurture multiracial and multiethnic communities.
- by Henry A. Giroux
In this article, Henry Giroux places the study of Whiteness in a historical context, recognizing the various modes in which racial identity has been used by conservative ideologues and critical scholars who seek to expand the discussion of race and power. The author also points out the limitations of the current scholarship on Whiteness. Although this scholarship has successfully expanded the study of race to include the study of Whiteness as a historical, cultural, and political construction, it has not shown the liberating potential of deconstruction Whiteness in the public sphere. With an analysis of Dangerous Minds and Suture, two movies with contrasting narratives of race, the author provides an example of the possibilities for critically discussing, in a classroom, the representation of race and ethnicity in the media. Through such a discussion, students of different races and ethnicities can reflect on the representation of themselves and other s and the position of Whiteness as the dominant referent. There is a need for Whiteness to be theorized and discussed in a manner that recognizes the potential for criticism, as well as the possibility for White students to recognize their own agency and legitimate place within the struggle for social change and an anti-racist society.
- by Frances A. Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault
In this article, Frances Maher and Mary Kay Tetreault revisit data presented in their book, The Feminist Classroom. In the book, they located their analysis in a traditionally feminist position of marginality, where they saw themselves allied with women of color in resisting a patriarchal academy. Subsequent discussions with colleagues and the proliferation of literature on Whiteness led them to realize that their own Whiteness, and the effects of Whiteness itself, remained uninterrogated in their original work. In this reanalysis of data from their book, they examine how assumptions of Whiteness shape the construction of knowledge as it is produced and resisted in the classroom. Drawing on classroom and interview data, they investigate how students' constructions of gender, class, ethnicity, and race are informed by unacknowledged assumptions of Whiteness.
Making and Molding Identity in Schools: Student Narratives on Race, Gender, and Academic Engagement
by Ann Locke Davidson.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. 257 pp. $19.95 (paper).
Anyone who works with high school students college counselors, curriculum developers, teachers, or administrators can find something of value in Ann Locke Davidson's look at the ways that school and classroom structures influence students' identity development. Her analysis of the confluence of race, ethnicity, class, and academic engagement provides descriptive illumination in the form of six case studies and liberal use of student narratives; insightful interpretations vis-à-vis theories of race, ethnicity, and school achievement; and provocative suggestions for enhancing school and classroom environments taken from students' experiences. Davidson argues that student identities are fluid, changing from one context to another, and that school structures such as tracking, disciplinary policies, and "significant speech acts" (what is said or not said by school personnel and other powerful actors) play a critical role in whether students manifest identities in schools that are in opposition to or in harmony with academic engagement.
Davidson and colleagues Patricia Phelan and Hanh Cao Yu at Stanford's Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching conducted the Students' Multiple Worlds Study, a three-year longitudinal investigation of fifty-five students from four large urban high schools in California. Davidson drew on this study to focus on school-level practices that students identify as influencing self-perceptions, social interactions, and attitudes toward education, particularly with regard to race and ethnicity. This book comes from data drawn from a two-year study of twelve cases, during which Davidson (with assistance from Phelan and Yu) followed twelve sophomores from the Multiple Worlds study, conducted interviews with students and school personnel, and examined school records and district-level statistical data.
The result is a text that highlights six students' voices, describing their backgrounds, their context-dependent identities, and the school practices particularly salient to these students' school experiences. There are five parts to this book that essentially serve three purposes: to provide a theoretical and research context (Part One), to present the six cases (Parts Two-Four) that represent three "patterns of identity construction" (p. 10), and to consider additional issues arising from the data that have policy implications for schools (Part Five).
The two chapters that comprise Part One give readers a helpful introduction to the context within which Davidson frames the cases that follow. Chapter one considers the shift in current understanding of racial and ethnic identity from purely cultural and anthropological factors to include local and school factors. Chapter two narrows the focus to describe five factors identified by students from the Multiple Worlds Study that impacted school engagement: tracking, negative expectations, differential treatment of racial and ethnic groups, bureaucratized relationships, and barriers to information.
The bulk of this text (Parts Two-Four) present six student cases chosen to describe three patterns of identity construction: unconventional, conformist, and transcultural. In Part Two, Davidson provides examples of alternative identity construction: two Latinas, one Mexican immigrant, and one Mexican-Cuban American silence and inhibit manifestations of their ethnic identities in order to succeed academically against negative ethnic stereotypes and barriers to information. In Part Three, a high-achieving European American male and a Mexican American female enrolled in general courses highlight the costs associated with conforming to stereotypes and local expectations. To illustrate two cases of transcultural identity formation, Davidson selected an African American male and a mixed-race Mexican American female to depict the processes by which these two were able to maintain individual conceptions of self as racial or ethnic and academically engaged.
In the epilogue (Part Five), Davidson suggests several issues that arise from this study that have implications for school and classroom practices. In this section she seeks to move beyond attributing student behavior and attitudes solely to race or class factors, and to consider the implications of her findings from students' voices on current theoretical and policy debates around race and ethnicity, multicultural curriculum, pedagogy, and approaches to student discipline.
Davidson's overall presentation is thorough and convincing in her analysis of student narratives. Each case provides portraits of the student's home background, as well as the student's peer and school contexts and relationships. Excerpts from interviews successfully maintain the authenticity of student voices while depicting the multiple and sometimes conflicting identities with which students can contend in their negotiation of peer relations and school culture. This willingness to portray multiple student identities strengthens her argument that students draw upon various aspects of their identity in different contexts, dependent on external feedback from peers and authorities, and that this construction of identity supports or deters behavior and attitudes necessary for academic engagement.
In addition, Davidson analyzes each case in terms of the influence of classroom and school practices in these students' creation and expression of self as students, making appropriate and insightful use of theoretical concepts. Each case highlights some disciplinary technology that serves to encourage or inhibit aspects of student identity. For example, the case of Marbella Sanchez in chapter three describes how sorting mechanisms isolate and marginalize a high-achieving Latina student and how disciplinary practices and bureaucratized relations disproportionately penalize African American and Latino students at her high school.
While most of the cases (particularly in Part Three on conventional identities) present a somber and discouraging portrait of these selected U.S. high schools, Davidson balances her analysis by providing examples of classroom and school practices that students identify as affirming of ethnic and racial identity and that defy cultural stereotypes of low-income minority students by encouraging academic engagement. Throughout the book, there are descriptions and quotes from teachers and counselors who succeed in creating an "atmosphere where learning rather than discipline was the primary focus" (p. 227).
Davidson is thorough and convincing in her analysis of student narratives. Each case provides portraits of the student's home background, as well as the student's peer and school contexts and relationships. Excerpts from interviews successfully maintain the authenticity of student voices while depicting the multiple and sometimes conflicting identities with which students must contend in their negotiation of peer relations and school culture. This willingness to portray multiple student identities strengthens her argument that students draw upon various aspects of their identity in different contexts, depending on external feedback from peers and authorities, and that this construction of identity supports or deters behavior and attitudes necessary for academic engagement.
Davidson explicitly sets out to focus on school practices; however, her descriptions of home situations for each student invites more attention to or at least greater acknowledgment of family influences on students' identity formation, particularly with regard to issues of gender. In the case of Sonia (ch. 5), the example of a Latina student who conforms to school and social expectations, Davidson mentions Sonia's fear of her father's "possibly violent reaction" (p. 113) to her report cards, but fails to consider the extensive psychological literature on the relationship between physical or domestic abuse on women's and girls' self-perceptions and behavior. In chapter seven, she describes the changes that Johnny, an African American male, underwent following his move from an inner-city school in St. Louis to California, where he lives with his uncle. While she describes Johnny's relationships with his uncle in California and his mother and grandmother in St. Louis, she makes little reference to the importance of having a male role model and father figure in Johnny's transformation from disengaged gang member to conscientious high school sophomore.
Any consideration of identity should necessarily include a discussion of sexual identity. Unfortunately, not only does Davidson fail to address gender issues adequately, she also makes no mention of issues of sexual identity, despite increasing attention in educational and psychological research to this subject. While no book can be fully inclusive, it seems that at least she might have included in her introduction a rationale for why this aspect of identity was excluded in her analysis.
Selecting cases to illustrate certain points always comes with a risk of omission, and in this case Davidson fails to adequately address the situation of Asian American and Asian immigrant students, a large racial minority group in California that is often misrepresented. While she distinguishes between Latinos as Mexican Americans or Cuban immigrants, she refers to the Asian and Asian American population as "of Asian descent," ignoring the political significance of the substantial population of Asian Americans in that state. Furthermore, she consistently lumps this group together with academically successful, middle-class European Americans, in effect perpetuating the "model minority myth" and ignoring the racial discrimination and economic barriers that many within this highly heterogeneous group face in U.S. schools and society.
One final question lingers from Davidson's analysis. How might educators and researchers make sense of the reality portrayed in these narratives that some schools and some classrooms manage to serve some students exceptionally well while alienating and marginalizing others? As Davidson suggests, we need to continue moving beyond simple cultural explanations of group behavior to seek out an understanding of student identity and learning that deftly acknowledges the roles that the multiple worlds we all inhabit play in our ability to transcend psychological, cultural, local, and socioeconomic barriers. How we do this will certainly affect our future decisions about school organization, curriculum, pedagogy, and disciplinary procedures.
b.t.
Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only
by Linda Brodkey.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 315 pp. $21.95 (paper).
The quality of my teaching is ultimately in the writing [my] students do. If any of them write to be read, after years of being graded but not necessarily read, then I consider myself to have done well by that class. (p. ix)
I pulled this quote from the beginning of Linda Brodkey's book, Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only, to illustrate what I found to be a consistent thread throughout her focus on teaching writing to students as a means for them to express their thoughts and ideas to others. It may well be argued that this is the purpose of all writing teachers, but Brodkey moves beyond this mere statement of a general purpose and develops an entire theoretical framework that folds back onto her practice as an associate professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego. The framework she builds focuses on writing education for the liberation of the minds and the imaginations of her students. She states:
I equate literacy with democracy, and suspect all definitions of literacy that either exclude writing or subordinate writing to reading of eroding everyone's civil liberties and civil rights by barring most citizens from access to publication, one of the most important public forums for sustained critique of government in any participatory democracy. (p. 2)
Brodkey puts herself at the center of the discussion of the teaching of writing, using herself as example and focus of critique. Rather than telling educators what not to do, she presents what she has done. Some may criticize this as self-promotion, but her actions are an example of her full participation in a dialectic, democratic process of education. In introductions to each of the four parts of her book, Brodkey develops the context of her practice. She presents her background in Education, her writing in Publications, her speaking in Presentations, and her classroom practice in Teaching.
In Part One, "Education: Writing on the Bias," Brodkey begins her story by reflecting on her own experience in learning how to read and write as a child growing up in Quincy, Illinois (population 40,000+), in a White working-class home. She weaves a story from her recollections and establishes for her readers a clear understanding of her personal relationship to writing. The reader may glean the essence of the relationship between the author as a child and the forces that shaped her life in a rich description and thoughtful critical analysis of her childhood social situation.
In Part Two, "Publications," Brodkey presents seven examples of her own writing about writing and literacy, including one cowritten with her colleague Michelle Fine. Each of these seven examples addresses various themes, including the process of writing, literacy as an expression of ideology, and expressions of critique in teaching writing. I found the theme of writing as an act of democratic participation to be the strongest. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines democracy as:
a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held elections.1
Brodkey extends participation in democracy beyond mere voting in "periodically held elections," and presents writing as another, more powerful way to participate. As agents with the skills to express ourselves through writing, we have the ability to influence the practice of democracy in our cities, towns, neighborhoods, and country. She states:
If composition can be said to abet the middle-class illusions of meritocracy, then the deregulation of writing is about replacing that empty promise with pedagogy that honors the First Amendment by teaching students that freedom of speech is meaningful only if the citizenry is literate. Not just functionally literate. Literate. Not just fluent. Literate. Literacy is attitude, entitlement, the entitlement that middle-class privilege masks in prescriptions but that writing lays bare in the sheer force of the desire to see and to get readers to see what can be seen from where the writer stands. (p. 72)
In Part Three, "Presentations," Brodkey focuses on a specific period of her career when she taught at the University of Texas. There she came face to face with the forces of "common sense," which all too often in an intellectual debate are reactionary in origin and effect. Brodkey describes and documents examples of opposition to multiculturalism from the administration and faculty at the university surrounding the composition curriculum, "Writing Across Difference." Having played a key role in the development of this rejuvenated curriculum for the introductory course, "English 306: Rhetoric and Composition," she was also at the center of the controversy when powerful forces led by key faculty and high-ranking university administrators dismantled attempts to implement this curriculum. She quotes the university president, William Cunningham:
Multiculturalism has become a code term for some people, signaling efforts to politicize the curriculum by promoting a particular ideology. We must not, and we will not permit such developments. (p. 183)
Her struggles at UT were a turning point in her career. She states in the introduction to Part Three:
The four unpublished papers presented at CCCC [Conference on College Composition and Communication] and the two lectures that complete this section were written after the University of Texas summarily scuttled the syllabus entitled "Writing about Difference" [for the composition course, English 306]. For a couple of years, no matter what the topic of my paper, most of the questions at the annual conference were about what happened at Texas. (p. 156)
Although not all her work during this period directly addresses the issues surrounding the English curriculum revamping efforts, it reflects what she calls "the heat of negative publicity" and the "chilly aftermath of administrative censure" (p. 157). The chapters in Part Three show the honesty, earnestness, and intellectual toughness with which she approached her work.
In Part Four, "Teaching," Brodkey begins by addressing the issues raised by the "Writing about Difference" curriculum. The first essay includes the controversial curriculum outline, and the second, coauthored with one of her former graduate students, Richard Penticoff, centers on this curriculum. She concludes with five essays authored independently by five of her graduate students from her course "Ethnographies of Literacy." Brodkey ends where she began because, as she states in her introduction, "the quality of my teaching is ultimately in the writing [my] students do" (p. ix). By concluding her book with these essays, we are left with what Brodkey most prizes as a hallmark of her accomplishment as a teacher her students "writing to be read."
r.h.t.
Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools
by Donna E. Muncey and Patrick J. McQuillan.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. 319 pp. $30.00.
In 1984, the Coalition of Essential Schools came into being. From an initial group of twelve charter schools that embraced common principles of practice, the Coalition grew within two years to a membership of fifty-six schools nationwide. By 1992, less than a decade after Ted Sizer conceived of the Coalition, 120 Coalition schools were in existence and another 172 were either planning on becoming members or were discussing the common principles (and presumably exploring the eventual possibility of Coalition membership). In less than ten years, Sizer's reform effort had spread to almost three hundred schools across the country. Today, the Coalition is involved with over nine hundred private, parochial, public, urban, suburban, and rural schools across the United States.
Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools, by Donna Muncey and Patrick McQuillan, is an effort to deepen our understanding of this important and wide-ranging educational reform effort. It is about the difficulties that accompany any effort to shape change in schools and the ways in which the Coalition has become, and remained, a prominent player in the education reform movement.
Ted Sizer codified his thoughts about what constitutes good schooling in the nine Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. These nine principles are, briefly, that school focus should be on helping adolescents learn to use their minds well; school goals should be simple: that each student master a limited number of essential skills; goals should apply to all students; teaching and learning should be personalized; the governing metaphor for schools should be student-as-worker; entry to secondary school should be on the basis of competence in language and mathematics, and a high school diploma should be in recognition of mastery of central skills as demonstrated by an exhibition; the school should stress the values of unanxious expectation, trust, and decency; the principal and teachers should perceive themselves as generalists before specialists; and school budgets should include substantial time for collective planning by teachers and should not exceed per-pupil costs at traditional schools by more than 10 percent. Each Coalition member embraces these nine principles in theory, or at least indicates a commitment to school change based on these principles. However, each member also interprets them according to the particularities of their school's composition and context. In this way, the Coalition insists on local control and autonomy, while recognizing and emphasizing a commonality that ties all members together.
This book grew out of five years of ethnographic research, begun in 1986 and concluded in 1991, conducted in eight Coalition schools: six public, one private, and one newly created secondary school. Schools were selected to be representative of the diversity in member schools at the onset of the study. The research sought to understand generally how the Coalition's nine common principles were understood and implemented in these schools. Data was gathered through observations of classes and school events; interviews with students, teachers, and administrators; a survey completed by fifteen hundred students; and related school documents. In addition, the authors attended Coalition staff meetings, conferences, workshops, and interviewed Coalition staff members.
The book focuses on educational change at two levels: school-based change and classroom-based change. It opens with an exploration of institutional perspectives on educational reform, presenting five case studies, which are then analyzed comparatively. In this discussion of the school as the unit of change, the authors conclude by identifying four issues impeding reform found in all the schools they studied: "lack of consensus about the need for reform, political strains generated by change efforts, time constraints, and tension between deepening understanding and sophistication of reform and broadening participation in these efforts" (p. 148).
Although the authors note that change proved difficult, they also acknowledge a pervasive Coalition benefit. Consistent among all study sites was "increased reflection on philosophy and practice among faculty and administrators" (p. 148), a not insignificant result of this change effort. The second section of the book examines how schoolwide change might prompt and support individual change efforts. Separate chapters explore a teacher's efforts to change his teaching practice, resistant students' negotiations about the terms of their learning, several teachers' understandings and subsequent utilization of active learning in their classrooms, and two principals' struggles to define their own roles and leadership styles during the process of school change.
The authors conclude with some general lessons about school reform, extracted as their work unfolded. They examine the political tensions that emerge both within and around any reform effort and acknowledge that strong leadership and the ability to learn from previous change efforts is essential to the maintenance of any effort to prompt institutional reform. Citing the Coalition's efforts within the context of education reform in this country, the authors explore the Coalition's place, and by extension the place of any educational reform effort, within the values and accepted practices of U.S. education. They insist that any attempt to change schools must be understood within our cultural values, especially the premium Americans place on success. Acknowledging that many of the lessons of school reform have been "disappointing and occasionally painful" in a "society that esteems success," the authors leave us with some cautionary notes and a bit of advice. With optimism that this study will serve to "clarify and deepen the education community's understanding of the change process and help reformers and educators create a more satisfying system," the authors conclude:
There are no quick fixes or miracle panaceas for American education. We urge ongoing and future reform efforts to study closely and learn from the experiences of these Coalition schools including those some might consider disappointments rather than dismissing them on the way to catching the next wave of educational change. (p. 295)
j.b.
Teaching Mathematics: Toward a Sound Alternative
by Brent Davis.
New York: Garland, 1996. 324 pp. $21.95 (paper).
Occurring somewhere between the surety of the known and the uncertainty of the unknown, the act of listening is similar to the project of education. It is, after all, when we are not certain that we are compelled to listen. Our listening is always and already in the transformative space of learning. (p. xxiv)
Brent Davis moves mathematics into the realm of the auditory, where language and speech are the focus. This is not to say he attempts to fracture mathematics learning into auditory and visual components, but, rather, to recenter the learning of mathematics away from its primary focus on the visual to what has been a secondary means of learning, the auditory. When I first began to grasp his contentions, I remembered so many lectures on mathematics; weren't these auditory learning situations? The fact is that in mathematics lectures, the focus is not on what is said by the teacher, but on what is written on the chalkboard. For example, a teacher might say, "Given any linear equation represented in standard form, the slope of the line described by this equation is given as the coefficient of the variable `x,' which is represented by the variable `m'." However, they would likely also write:
y = mx + b
Clearly, mathematics instruction focuses on the visual, but then the argument could be that mathematics is inherently visual. Why then focus on "word problems," mathematics problems based on language? Although learning and using mathematics requires both the visual and the auditory, the auditory, Davis claims, has been ignored.
Davis's book is not a simplistic one that merely gives various examples of possible aurally based lessons. He is meticulous in how he develops his framework of mathematics education. He begins from four root terms, listening, mathematics, teaching, and learning, and through five chapters develops his vision in a complete and comprehensive manner.
In chapter one, he begins by developing the theoretical framework upon which he bases his teaching. It is also apparent from the succeeding chapters that his "theory" is influenced by his own practice in mathematics education as an assistant professor of Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia. Chapter one is composed of three parts Enactivism, Hermeneutics, and Listening. In the Listening section, Davis expands the definition of listening: "It is by listening by attending to the person's action and situation, and not just to his or her voice that one comes to know the other" (p. 36). Through this expanded definition, Davis reiterates his earlier contention of the separateness, yet inseparability, of the auditory and the visual. But by "attending to a person's actions and situation," Davis does not mean to look, but to listen, to hear what a person is doing, to what the person is also hearing. Davis ends this chapter by providing a framework of three distinct yet not exclusive "'modes' of listening" (p. 52): Evaluative, Interpretive, and Hermeneutic. He describes and gives examples of each.
Having established his listening framework, Davis moves to the subject of mathematics in chapter two. Here he develops his interpretation of mathematics and its relationship to curriculum. He names mathematics as ecological mathematics, which, he is careful to state, is not to be conflated with environmental organizations such as Greenpeace. Davis begins by giving a broad definition of ecology:
Ecology is about interrelationships and interconnections. It involves an attunement to codependencies, mutual effects, and codetermination in essence, to the fundamental intertwining of all things. When we speak of ecology, then we speak of everything that shapes our being their effects on us and ours on them. Folding back to earlier discussions of enactivism, hermeneutics, and listening, such notions are found in an awareness of this sort of deep ecological interweaving. (p. 58)
Then, he connects mathematics to human ecology and human existence. He directly addresses what so many mathematics students from grade school have asked over the years, "What do I need this for?" by unfracturing mathematics, by making clear the connections between mathematics and life. But he is also clear that mathematics is limited in both its purpose and meaning to humanity. Mathematics is only a part of life within the framework he develops, and he concentrates on in this part. In the next two sections of chapter two, Davis moves through his ideas about mathematics curriculum and its relationship to teacher education and teaching, providing examples of his modes of listening and tying together his ideas about teaching mathematics with a listening orientation.
In chapter three, Davis provides a discussion of his understanding of teaching and how listening, mathematics, and teaching coalesce and mingle. In three sections Culture Making, Artistry, and Pedagogy he gives the reader a clear understanding of his formulation of mathematics education through listening, once again returning to his modes of listening structure.
In Chapter Four, Davis explores his ideas about learning in three sections: Knowing, Understanding and Meaning, and Play. In the fifth and final chapter, Davis reaffirms the connections he had been making among listening, mathematics, teaching, and learning. In the chapter's three sections The Nature of Teaching, Assessment, and Mathematics Teaching as Listening he returns to his modes of listening structure, applying it in a different context.
In writing this review, I must have used "visual" metaphors at least five times and went back to ask why? I removed these visual metaphors because I wanted to concentrate on the aural. Learning and expressing through sight are often predominant in our thinking, and I believe that paying more attention to sound, to listening, to hearing can open our ears to a whole new pedagogical approach to mathematics and, indeed, to other subjects. I believe that Brent Davis, through this book, has done that.
r.h.t.
The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem
by Deborah Meier.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. 185 pp. $12.00 (paper).
The publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 launched a decade and a half of focus on the ills of America's schools. Since then, enormous attention has been paid to the perceived failure of the public school system in this country and the sub-standard achievement of its students. The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem by Deborah Meier offers a different story. While Meier's work may be viewed as a template for reform, it is also a real success story of an inner-city school that works, thus offering an optimistic picture of the possibilities of public education. In engaging and inspiring prose, Meier offers the reader lessons grounded in her own experience.
Meier opens the book in fierce defense of public schools. In her mind, without a passion for public education the future of democracy is threatened. Based on her own experience, she believes that all children can and, indeed, must learn to be powerful thinkers in order to participate in our democracy. She notes that "there's a radical and wonderful new idea here the idea that every citizen is capable of the kind of intellectual competence previously attained by only a small minority. . . . This book is about taking this vision of education and human possibility seriously" (p. 4). Chapter by chapter, Meier argues for innovation: school choice as a strategy for change, small schools to engage students, teachers, and parents working with each other in ways that would be impossible in larger schools. Beyond these innovations, she also encourages mutual respect among teachers, students, administrators, and parents as a prerequisite for collaboration and collective school ownership. Finally, Meier calls for the reinvention of teaching, encouraging teachers to:
change how they view learning itself, develop new habits of mind to go with their new cognitive understanding, and simultaneously develop new habits of work habits that are collegial and public in nature, not solo and private as has been the custom in teaching. (p.140)
In 1974 Deborah Meier founded Central Park East Secondary School, an alternative public school in East Harlem, where she worked for two decades as a teacher and principal. The small school achieved national acclaim not only for its non-traditional approaches (no bells ring, classes are often up to two hours long, and students, addressing their teachers by first names, are encouraged to raise questions about what is being taught), but also because of its results. Over 90 percent of Central Park East's students graduate, and over 90 percent of those graduates go on to college, in a city where, on average, only 50 percent of all public school students even graduate from high school.
Some of Deborah Meier's innovative approaches to education seem almost commonplace today interdisciplinary learning in small groups, real lessons that use the city as the classroom (a curriculum that includes such things such as mapping Manhattan or testing the water quality of the East River) and public "exhibitions" to demonstrate students' learning, rather than reliance on multiple-choice, standardized tests. Perhaps the best known of her ideas is that a school, to be effective, cannot be large. In her words:
Every child is entitled to be in a school small enough that he or she can be known by name to every faculty member in the school and well known by at least a few of them, a school so small that family can easily come in and see the responsible adults and the responsible adults can easily and quickly see each other. What size is that exactly? It can't be too small, but surely it can't be larger than a few hundred! (p. 117)
Meier holds the firm belief that students and teachers should be able to deal directly with each other as human beings, and that can only be accomplished when the school, in essence, is its own community. "Small school size is not only a good idea but an absolute prerequisite for qualitative change in deep seated habits, not just rhetoric" (p. 107).
One of Meier's aims is to hew America's big comprehensive high schools into communities of a manageable size. According to Meier, schools are not merely buildings, and creating new schools doesn't "depend on new buildings, just using the ones we have differently" (p. 107). Just as Central Park East shares a large building with other schools, monolithic high schools across the country may be replaced with smaller schools within a shared structure. As Meier notes:
We can redesign what are, after all, merely brick and mortar buildings into campuses composed not only of many different schools, but of schools for children of different ages and, if we are imaginative enough, other kinds of institutions that would live nicely side-by-side with the young. We could surround our children with true living communities in which old and young pass each other daily and are not violated into age/grade ghettos. (p. 116)
Meier's book is the story of how the overhaul of the U.S. public education system might be accomplished with a bit of imagination, creativity, determination, and a healthy dose of common sense.
As she acknowledges in her preface, "After thirty years of almost daily immersion in my own particular school's life, I now wake up each morning worrying about `other people's' schools, not my own. It's a big shift" (p. ix). And a very useful shift with important implications for educators and policymakers across the United States. At a time when the rhetoric in educational circles is that all children can learn and achieve at high levels, Meier offers us the success story of Central Park East as demonstration of that fact.
j.b.
Special Issue of Paedagogica Historica: History of Education in the Postmodern Era
edited by Sol Cohen and Marc Depaepe.
Gent, Belgium: Universiteit Gent, 1996. 288 pp. $40.00 (paper).
The 1996 special issue of Paedagogica Historica (PH), the journal of educational history produced at the University of Gent, Belgium, is titled, "History of Education in the Postmodern Era." Claiming that "the history of education . . . has so far been unable to integrate postmodernist theories adequately into its own discourse" (p. 302), the editors challenge educational historians to bring educational historiography into the postmodern era. They succeed in producing a thoughtful contribution to the field. This special issue is a long-overdue step, making explicit the relationship between postmodernism and the history of education.
The special issue contains six articles, one review article, and several book reviews. All but one of the articles Heinz-Elmar Tenorth's evaluation of the state of the history of education in Germany are printed in English. (In the journal's twenty-five-year history, approximately half of its articles have been in English.)
The editors asked each of the contributors to address one of the two following issues: "1) postmodernist approaches to the actual practice of the history of education, or 2) critiques of postmodern theories of history, with particular relevance to the history of education" (p. 302). By approaching one of these themes from their particular research specialty, the contributors meet the editors' specifications as they "illustrate the richness and diversity of concerns that cluster around the questions raised by postmodernism" (p. 305).
Roy Lowe of the University of Wales, Swanseas, contributed a piece titled, "Postmodernity and Historians of Education: A View from Britain." Lowe takes a theoretical and methodological approach to addressing the editors' task. He identifies some of the key concepts in postmodernism and links them to the concerns of educational historians. Agustin Escolano of Valladolid wrote "Postmodernity or High Modernity? Emerging Approaches in the New History of Education." He, like Lowe, approaches postmodernism's implications for the history of education from the standpoints of theory and methodology; Escolano scrutinizes ethnomethodology and microhistorical approaches.
Heinz-Elmar Tenorth of Berlin contributed "Lob des Handwerks, Kritik der Theorie Zur Lage der padagogischen Historiographie in Deutschland," in which he discusses the history of ideas, the social history, and the comparative-social educational history in Germany. Theresa Richardson of Tampa, Florida, covers quite a bit of territory in "Ambiguities in the Lives of Children: Postmodern Views on the History and Historiography of Childhood in English Canada." She synthesizes the history and historiography of childhood through four tropes: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, with a focus on English Canada.
"Postmodernism, The New Cultural History, Film: Resisting Images of Education," by UCLA's Sol Cohen, is a most engaging piece, perhaps because of Cohen's cogent explication of postmodernism for the newcomer. Cohen, arguing that postmodernism has contributed to the collapse between academic and popular cultures, discusses the film Dead Poet's Society within the context of educational history. He explains, "I don't presume to give `the' meaning of [the film] for understanding recent American educational history, but to suggest some of its possible meanings, which, given the problematic nature of `meaning' in our postmodern epoch, is about all we can hope for, but which may be enough to continue the conversation about movies after the movie is over" (p. 396).
Finally, editors Marc Depaepe (Leuven) and Frank Simon (Gent/Brussel) present a self-critique for their readers in "Paedagogica Historica: Lever or Mirror in the Making of the History of Education?" Depaepe and Simon carry out a qualitative and quantitative retrospective of PH, begun in 1961, addressing whether it has indeed "stimulated or just mirrored trends in (post)modern educational historiography" (p. 421). The journal's editors divide the history into two phases: the "old" and "new" series. The old series, which ran from 1961 until 1989, "at first glance, did not act as a direct driving force towards innovation" (p. 423). The new series began with the 1990 issue and is its newer, "leftish" progeny (p. 423). The forthrightness and self-critique are refreshing in this special issue of PH. In true postmodernist fashion, the editors direct the microscope not only at their contributors, but also at themselves, to ask difficult questions. I enjoyed being reminded of the international partnership of which educational historians and researchers are a part. Too often those of us in the United States place ourselves in the center of the academic universe, forgetting our place in the international academic community.
c.a.w.
Common Fire: Lives of Commitment in a Complex World
by Laurent A. Parks Daloz, Cheryl H. Keen, James P. Keen, and Sharon Daloz Parks.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. 288 pp. $25.00.
Common Fire: Lives of Commitment in a Complex World by Laurent Parks Daloz, Cheryl Keen, James Keen, and Sharon Daloz Parks contains the voices and stories of individuals who have chosen to live their lives in ways that help make a difference in a very complicated world. These people have devoted their lives to effecting change from founding a hazardous waste cleanup company to locating business internships for African American and Latino youth. The authors explore the roots, cultivation, and costs of lives of commitment and offer some conclusions on what it may take to encourage and sustain lives dedicated to the common good.
The title, Common Fire, is derived from the image of the town commons, "a shared, public space that anchored the American vision of democracy" (p. 2). The essential ingredient here (albeit somewhat idealized, as the authors confess) is the common as a meeting place and place for conversation, the place where people share a stake, participate, and accept responsibility for something communal. It is the authors' contention that in an increasingly complicated world, the sense of connection that once existed around the town common is being quickly eroded. Today's new commons is "global in scope, diverse in character and dauntingly complex" (p. 3). Accepting responsibility for communal issues in the new commons requires a new set of skills, the ability to connect everyday work with global concerns, and the recognition that one's own well-being is inextricably intertwined with the good of a diverse whole.
This book is the product of several years of research. The authors, four educators, conducted interviews with over one hundred people, all with widely divergent roles, responsibilities, backgrounds, and personal characteristics. Drawn from poor, working-class, middle-class, and elite families, half are male and half are female. Ranging in age from thirty-two to eighty-plus, some respondents are Democrats, some Republicans, and some Independents. The sample was carefully selected to reflect the diversity in place of birth, race, age, gender, ethnicity, political persuasion, and religion of U.S. society. Though diverse, the common thread is that each of these individuals shares what the authors call "a long-term commitment to the common good" (p. 5). Included in this group are Maria Velasquez (all names are pseudonyms), who is starting a new high school for urban youth; Ben Greystone, who, at the age of sixty-eight, is actively teaching public health; Joanna Chapman, who is connecting members of the local community with prison inmates; and Todd North, who, over nearly a decade, has built a neighborhood economic development project into a million-dollar-plus corporation responsible for providing a wide range of local social services from battered women's shelters to a home winterization program.
The authors did not intend their book to be simply a collection of narratives about the lives of "distinctive" people, however engaging that might be. Although they present the stories and perspectives of the individuals they interviewed, the authors' aim is to draw on these stories to illuminate commonalities among respondents and to explore the patterns found across respondents' lives to "understand how these committed people think about themselves and the world, and what led them to live the way they do" (p. 8). As the authors explain,
our purpose is to . . . reflect the lives of the many people who live and work in committed and sustained ways amidst the complexity of the new commons in behalf of the common good. They are not "special" or "exceptional," although they are perhaps distinctive for they manifest qualities and forms of competence that are more in tune with the realities of the emergent world than with some of the assumptions of the past. . . . Most important, they reflect the potential in all of us to find the strength and quality of commitment needed for the practice of citizenship in the twenty-first century. (pp. 78)
The authors conclude with an exploration of the practical ways connections between people can be fostered in different sectors of our society. This book is an important read for anyone interested in cultivating a commitment to the common good.
j.b.
Community Service Learning: A Guide to Including Service in the Public School Curriculum
edited by Rahima C. Wade.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. 379 pp. $21.95 (paper).
Community Service Learning is a book is for practitioners interested in developing or improving curriculum around local community service. The editor's premise is that community service learning is an effective curricular tool educators might employ to develop active and informed citizens in a democratic society, and, as such, community service learning should have a central if not prominent place in our public schools. Whether the reader agrees with the need for the centrality of service learning in the public school curriculum or service leaning's promise to develop active and responsible citizens, this book offers some useful suggestions about how community service might be integrated with academic coursework as a strategy to incorporate hands-on active learning as part of the regular school day.
Community Service Learning is divided into four parts. Part One summarizes the components of a well-thought-out service-learning program. This section is designed in a workbook format, with questions to prompt thinking on the part of educators already involved in service learning or planning to begin a service-learning curriculum. The section also lends itself to use in college service-learning classes or in a staff development program on service learning. Separate chapters address the preparation and planning phase of a service project, the collaboration needed within the school, as well as collaboration between the school and the surrounding community, the service component itself, integration of service learning into a school's academic curriculum, the role of reflection in service learning, and ways of ensuring the ongoing success of service-learning by building support for community service in the school and community.
Part Two examines the diversity of service-learning programs at all levels of schooling, and provides examples of service-learning programs at elementary, middle, and high schools. One example cited in this volume is a visit to a nursing home. The learning would be interdisciplinary, including lessons about health care, social studies (the roles of older adults in our society), or mathematics (the concept of fixed budgets). Contributing authors include vignettes of actual programs underway in several schools, as well as their own thoughts about the challenges to service-learning practice. Part Three introduces the stories and perspectives of students, agency members, teachers, and administrators involved in service learning a classroom teacher at a pueblo community school, a midwestern high school junior, an assistant superintendent in a district of two high schools, and the West Coast director of a community agency for youth, among others.
Finally, Part Four explores the future of service learning in the public schools. It addresses the need for a healthy and informed critique of both individual service learning programs in schools and the national service-learning movement and provides an assessment of the challenges facing the ongoing development of service learning. The section also includes a chapter on pre-service teacher education, acknowledging that if the service-learning movement is to grow it will be as a result of teacher development in this area. Editor Wade concludes with her own final thoughts about the potential of service learning: "Service-learning, by its very nature, brings people together in pursuit of a common cause, a shared goal. The practice of service-learning, then, can have a transformative effect on the individualistic values of schools and communities, and the values of the people within them. . . . Educators must not forget that while our schools mirror society, they also serve as agents of cultural change" (p. 332).
An engaging and practical read, this book will prove to be an indispensable resource for all K-12 educators interested or involved in service learning. The inclusion of an appendix, "Resources for K-12 Community Service-Learning Programs," is an invaluable compilation of handbooks, guides, and articles on community service, as well as a listing of those organizations that can be contacted to provide assistance in this area. The book can be read and used on two levels as a how-to manual (with chapters that can almost be used as checklists of effective practice) for those practitioners either just beginning or further developing service-learning programs in their schools, or as a more general text on the philosophical underpinnings of the service-learning movement and the state of service-learning practice in public schools today.
j.b.
Bold Plans for School Restructuring: The New American Schools Designs
edited by Sam Stringfield, Steven Ross, and Lana Smith.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996. 322 pp. $69.95; $24.50 (paper).
Bold Plans for School Restructuring: The New American Schools Designs is the story of nine New American Schools development teams' efforts to create and implement new whole-school restructuring models. Editors Stringfield, Ross, and Smith have assembled summaries of the principles and practices, as articulated by the practitioners themselves, of the diverse set of school improvement models known as the New American Schools, a nationwide effort to change the ways we think about schooling.
In 1989, in response to calls for reform of U.S. schools, President Bush convened the nation's governors in an education summit. One of the proposals that emerged from that meeting was to create a private, nonprofit corporation to develop "new, break-the-mold school designs for the 21st century." In 1991, with leadership from the foundation and corporate communities, the New American Schools Development Corporation (NAS) was established. Using private sector venture capital, a five-year school restructuring demonstration project was initiated under NAS direction. Committed to the idea that no one school improvement plan could serve as the solution to reinvigorate all of America's schools, NAS chose to fund a number of diverse reform efforts at once. The demonstration was to have three phases: a one-year development phase, a two-year testing phase, and, finally, a scale-up phase. NAS design efforts are currently in phase three. This book is the synopsis of stories of phases one and two, and a summary of the preliminary, exploratory lessons that can be drawn from early research results.
Documenting a rich array of diverse efforts to restructure the nation's schools, this volume is a practical and useful resource. Not intended as either an in-depth portrait of the individual NAS designs, or even a rich descriptive look at the challenges and opportunities inherent in whole-school restructuring efforts, this book provides a broad overview of each of the nine NAS designs in sufficient enough detail to understand their key design principles. And, although research is underway to evaluate the effects of these programs, this book is not intended as a report of that research. It is meant as a straightforward summary of the first three years of NAS planning and implementation.
Following an introduction by David Kearns, NAS Chairman, and John Anderson, NAS President, each chapter of this volume presents a different restructuring design, each of which is introduced by the program designers. The NAS designs described include the Audrey Cohen College System of Education: Purpose-Centered Education; ATLAS Communities: Authentic Teaching, Learning and Assessment for all Students; The Co-NECT Design for School Change; Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound; The Modern Red Schoolhouse; Reform at All Levels: National Alliance for Restructuring Education; Roots and Wings: Universal Excellence in Elementary Education; Community Learning Center; and Los Angeles Learning Centers: An Initiative of Los Angeles Unified School District, United Teachers of Los Angeles, and Los Angeles Educational Partnership. The final chapter is a glimpse into the RAND Corporation's ongoing NAS evaluation, and a synopsis of the lessons that have emerged from RAND's formative assessment of the demonstration effort's first three years.
This book is a good foundational read for an understanding of both the workings of NAS schools and the thoughts and beliefs of design team members. Collectively, the NAS design teams bring a wealth of experience and a deep pool of creative and innovative ideas to the issue of school improvement. Capturing the expertise of the NAS practitioners in a few short chapters, Bold Plans for School Restructuring is surely a useful initial resource for both practitioners and policymakers interested in a variety of school restructuring design options.
One important note is the variety of approaches to reform. There is no single "NAS design" there are nine different models of "whole school" change efforts some start from the ground up (new schools), some involve changing existing schools, and some involve change at single or multiple levels, such as elementary, middle, or high school.
j.b.
Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work
by Paulo Freire.
New York: Routledge, 1996. 256 pp. $16.95 (paper).
In Letters to Cristina, Paulo Freire guides educators through a genealogical re-tracing of his intellectual restlessness, curiosity, and revolutionary spirit. In his letters to his niece, Cristina, he sets in motion an irreversible process of disquieting that compels us to see ourselves as historical agents engaged in "the search for a voice and the rebelliousness that must become more critically revolutionary" (p. 87). As Freire says, "For me to return to my distant childhood is a necessary act of curiosity" (p. 13).
Through his Letters, Freire does not merely imagine a world where education is an act of freedom, he shares with us a myriad of contradictions with which an educator of action must necessarily and tirelessly grapple. By revisiting his childhood, Freire provides us with an intimate portrait of the organic growth of an educator who has committed the greater part of his life and work to the liberation of the oppressed and their oppressors:
In reminiscing about his childhood which Paulo exposes in the most intimate way, describing its most difficult moments he did not idealize or romanticize those days. He described them because those were the years that fed the critical thought of his adulthood. (p. 192)
Throughout these eighteen letters, Freire reminds us of the importance our memories play in revisiting, reconstructing, and re-critiquing our actions, past and present, so as to enable us to generate and sustain liberating memories as agents of change. Freire presents an intimate portrait of the trajectory and evolution of his non-neutral, socialist, political-pedagogical project of conscientization, through his letters. As Ana Maria Araújo Freire, his wife, masterfully crystallizes in the "Notes" section that accompanies Freire's letters:
The close relationship of these letters to Paulo's life did not reduce them to subjective texts, but rather charged them heavily with subjectivity; they translate real moments of the objectivity of Brazilian history, a history that he participated in as a subject. (p. 192)
It is through his Letters that Freire knits memories of his childhood and adult struggles with a view towards the struggle for a world of compassionate, critical, liberatory pedagogy. Through the use of his life's stories, Freire recounts the complexities of his coming to consciousness. Ana Maria Freire again puts it best when she says that:
Through letters it was easier and more profound for Paulo to analyze Brazil's many problems metaphorically, using Lourdes's piano, his father's neckties, "Mr." Armada's ruthlessness, the cloth pads on the heads of the piano movers, the calungas of the trucks, the soldiers of the handkerchief gang . . . and many other instances. Using these images to talk about the experiences and frustrated dreams of the people, Paulo talks about the most distinct facets of Brazilian reality: the lack of hope; the presence of oppression, authoritarianism, exploitation, and domination; the dreams of what is possible, the striking social differences; the deficiencies of education and the schools; the poverty, hunger, unemployment; and, finally, the deprivation of the many and the opulence of the few. (p. 192)
The immediacy of the issues that Freire writes about in his Letters resonate today with the same clarity, strength of conviction, and force as they did in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and in his Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. His Letters are an open invitation to all educators to deepen our convictions for a pedagogy for liberation, and to broaden our conceptions of how we can address ourselves and those with whom we struggle. His words strengthen and revivify our resolve and our humility toward a critical pedagogy grounded in action.
j.a.s.
Women's Ethnicities: Journeys through Psychology
edited by Karen Fraser Wyche and Faye J. Crosby.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. 208 pp. $59.00; $18.95 (paper).
This collection of articles on gender and ethnicity issues examined through a psychological lens grew out of a weekend retreat in the spring of 1994, when editors Karen Wyche and Faye Crosby gathered together several friends and colleagues. The guests were instructed to bring a friend of another race, and to "bring an open heart and mind and also a specific dilemma or problem relevant to issues of gender and ethnicity that bothered her as a feminist" (p. 3). At the end of the weekend, the participants were invited to contribute to Women's Ethnicities and encouraged to collaborate with others, including colleagues who had not attended. Those pieces make up this collection. Reflecting the complexity of women's lives, the collection also addresses racial, ethnic, and national diversity, while maintaining its focus on gender and ethnicity.
The book is divided into three sections: Education Is Political; Women's Work: Mothering and Modeling; and Gender, Culture, and Values. Each section is grouped according to a theme, which is explained by the editors in brief section introductions. In Section One, "Education Is Political," the editors work from the premise that "what is taught, how it is taught, how studies are designed and what scholarship is used in teaching are influenced by the ideology of the teacher, researcher, and larger academic community" (p. 5). The articles in this section, "Staying Within the Academy" by Brenda Allen, "Teaching Is a Political Act: Contextualizing Gender and Ethnic Voices" by Kimberly Kinsler and Sue Rosenberg Zalk, and "Walking the Talk: On Stage and Behind the Scenes" by Julie Kmiec, Faye Crosby, and Judith Worell, address the political nature of teaching.
Section Two, which focuses on motherhood, contains Elizabeth Sparks's "Overcoming Stereotypes of Mothers in the African American Context," Karen Fraser Wyche and Debra Lobato's "Minority Mothers: Stress and Coping When Your Child Is in Special Education," and Sheryl Olson and Rosario Ceballo's "Emotional Well-Being and Parenting Behavior Among Low-Income Single Mothers: Social Support and Ethnicity as Contexts of Adjustment." The focus of this section is on the challenges of motherhood, how social context influences how women meet these challenges, and how feminists can "help expand women's ways of meeting the challenge of mothering" (p. 65).
The third section is comprised of "Living with Anomalies: Sojourns of a White American Jew" by Sandra Schwartz Tangri; "The Moral Self, Values, and Circles of Belonging" by Mary Brabeck; "Intraethnic and Interethnic Diversity: Researching the Japanese American and Mexican American Communities" by Guadalupe Gutierrez and Dana Nagata; and "Rethinking Psychological Theory to Encompass Issues of Gender and Ethnicity: Focus on Achievement" by Amy Dabul and Nancy Felipe Russo. The themes of this section are the multiple contexts of diversity and ethnic identity and the collaboration between feminist scholars and their students.
The editors acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of feminist research, which is reflected in this collection. Each contributor seeks to understand how gender and ethnicity are conceptualized as analysis categories, and how gender and ethnicity influence women's lives.
I was interested to read how the contributors self-identify ethnically and racially; doing so connected the researchers' lives to the work they prepared for this collection. One contributor "self-identifies as an African American woman," while another "self-identifies as a California Chicana," and still another "self-identifies as a second-generation Swedish American woman" (pp. xiii-xiv). This opening sets the tone for an honest look at the role that ethnicity and race play in women's lives.
Women's Ethnicities is suited for the researcher and practitioner interested in learning more about issues of diversity among women. It extends research that uses gender as a category of analysis.
c.a.w.
by Joanne Hindley.
York, ME: Stenhouse, 1996. 186 pp. $19.50 (paper).
In the Company of Children is a story of one elementary school teacher and how she lives and learns in the company of her thirty students. The author, Joanne Hindley, is a third/fourth-grade teacher and one of the founders of the Manhattan New School, a public school on the upper east side of Manhattan. Through this book, Hindley uncovers her continual meaning-making about reading and writing as tools for learning. She invites the reader to explore the evolution of her classroom as a place for learning that is built on choice, predictability, interaction, and, of course, the need for time.
The book is filled with examples of children's writing, teacher observation notes, and teacher and student reflections. These artifacts illustrate the seriousness about learning, high expectation, and extraordinary depth of reflection by teacher and students. The many photographs, both black-and-white and color, provide a vision of how extraordinary classrooms can be.
The book is divided into two parts: Writing Workshop and Reading Workshop. In the first section, Hindley illustrates how one-to-one conferences, careful observation, and note-taking inform her teaching, and how each has the potential to raise the quality of writing in the classroom. She reveals how drawing from her own experience and exposing her vulnerability as a writer influence her teaching:
Putting myself on the line, sharing what it's like to go through some of the same struggles and successes the students experience . . . has been helpful in getting me to talk to kids in the voice of a writer, not a teacher. (author's emphasis, p. 20)
In the second section, Reading Workshop, she explains how, what, and when she teaches. Drawing from her own life as a reader, Hindley examines how her thinking process influences her talk with student readers. In the last section of the book, she addresses how parents and students participate with her in assessing student work.
What makes this book powerful is that it is Joanne Hindley's story an honest portrait of how one teacher continues to evolve as a teacher and learner. She says it best:
My job is to marvel at all that unfolds right before me, to recognize the strengths and needs of individual readers and to wonder about the implications of what I see for whole class instruction. This job is easiest if I am always ready to learn something from my students. I too am a student, and I have become comfortable in this position and appreciate all my students have to teach me. (p.102)
Although this book is a story of one third/fourth-grade classroom, I recommend it to educators of diverse interests and backgrounds: teachers of all grades who care to learn through another teacher's classroom research; college professors who are seeking a thoughtful, artful, and rigorous account of what it means to teach; and administrators who value passion, excellence, and taking risks.
m.h.
Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education
by Joe Nathan.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. 233 pp. $25.00 (paper).
Charter schools have the support of both President Clinton and Newt Gingrich, half of the states have passed charter school legislation, and the number of such schools around the country has increased dramatically since 1990. All of this activity illustrates how the concept of charter schools has thoroughly captured the imagination of much of the American public. However, since charter schools are a relatively new phenomenon, there remains a need for information about what they are, how they function, and their costs and benefits. Joe Nathan attempts to meet that need in his new book, Charter Schools. It is a readable introduction for various constituencies (policymakers, parents, educators, administrators, and the electorate), addressing the important issues surrounding this type of reform. From ideology and accountability to politics and implementation, Charter Schools provides a comprehensive overview.
Nathan divides the book into four main sections, with a series of informative appendices. Part One is a brief tour of seven charter schools, highlighting the students, the educational views of the faculty, and the facilities. From these schools, Nathan segues into the historical development of charter school legislation. This history becomes a case study in how a reform begins, what arguments exist for and against charter schools, and, more specifically, the travails of charter school legislation as it makes its way through the political system in Minnesota. Part Two illustrates specifically how charter schools can affect school systems, using examples from various locations around the country. In this section, Nathan attempts to define a new role for unions in education. Part Three focuses on the business of implementation, and is very much a "how-to" guide for charter school start-up ventures. In keeping with this focus, Nathan delves into specifics such as tax exempt status, constituency building, and faculty recruitment, tying in those issues with the necessity of staying in business through community-building and assessment. Part Four examines both the literature from early charter school start-ups and the prospects for the future of this reform. The final section is a useful series of appendices that outline state-by-state activities, a model charter school law, and a resource section with contact people, on-line listings, and more information and help for those interested in forming a new charter school.
Charter Schools does not profess to be the seminal work on the efficacy, theory, or implementation of charter schools, but it is a powerful resource for anyone interested in learning more about what charter schools are, how to start one, and what the future has in store for them.
j.y.
Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
by bell hooks.
New York: Henry Holt, 1996. 183 pp. $20.00.
Through sixty-one vignettes, or memories, bell hooks's girlhood reminds us that the marrow of our lives, our memories, infuse the interstices of our complex selves. Our memories are always adding dimension to the confluence of lyrical remembrances that draw together the experiences, dreams, and fantasies of our lives. hooks's work is filled with family and friends, the "light milk chocolate skin" of a "Baby" (a baby doll), as well as the surrendering to the magic of "black boxes" (cameras). hooks describes the wonderment of these convergences:
The beauty lies in the way it all comes together exposing and revealing the inner life of a girl inventing herself creating the foundation of selfhood and identity that will ultimately lead to the fulfillment of her true destiny becoming a writer. (p. xi)
hooks's work represents the untamable poetic spirit of a Black woman intellectual who weaves the swatches of her life with a childlike curiosity of boundless energy. hooks's writing evokes the infinite field of possibilities through the use of memories as an instrument of reconstructing and reconstituting herself. The power of her memoirs, of telling her own story "as truth and myth as poetic witness" (p. xiv) begins the necessary process of rupturing the historical erasures of the girlhood experiences of young Black women in literature. This work brings to us the story of a disobedient girl who stakes out and claims a new Black feminist terrain from which she generates a new "selfhood" as a very deliberate refusal to allow the imposition of racialized, cultural, and gendered scripts.
In Bone Black, bell hooks passes on to us the living memory and the joyfully militant legacy of the girlhood of a Black warrior woman.
j.a.s.