s/r home  | issues  | authors

5 Synthesis/Regeneration       Winter 1993

EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRATIC EMPOWERMENT:
DIVERSE VOICES



"radicalteacher (rad i k'l te char) n." defn.


Editorial Introduction
Schooling should be an arena for Green action, that is: democratization and subversion.

Crisis in the Schools

Corporate and Military Influences in the "Educational Crisis"
Dan Bourque points out that education's hidden goal is to serve elite interests.

Teachin' for Old Massa
Frank Girard: The operative word in the classroom is "discipline."

Problems of Black Youth...Are Basic!
Lennox Farrell describes a Black child of official rejection, in the "basic" track.

Life Before Kindergarten
Cindy Jurie on the importance of childcare.

Academic Feminism (poem)
Karen Fiser

Song of the Barrio (poem)
Phil Woods

"Banking Education" (prose as poetry)
from Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)

Alternative Perspectives on Schooling

The Function of Schooling: The Missing Question in the Current Educational Debate
Jesse Goodman asks: are schools simply for vocational training?

Schooling for Critical Citizenship
Henry Giroux argues that curricula and school practices need to be consistent with equality, freedom, and justice.

Public Values and Public Policy
Jay D. Jurie advocates the empowerment of people in a public process of debating and redefining social values.

The Libertarian Education Alternative: A Discussion of Spring's Primer
John Vidoli reviews Joel Spring's A Primer of Libertarian Education, a model of thinking about educational reform as an element of social change.

Two Radical Visions

Radical Democracy: A Contested/ing Terrain
Kate Sandilands: democracy as students/citizens contesting both their own particularity and universal ideals.

Pursuing Social Justice Through Education: Schooling for a Critical Democracy
Landon E. Beyer envisions rejuvenated, collaborative, compassionate, utopian schooling.

Curriculum for Empowerment

Democratic Citizenship and the Teaching of History
Ken Osborn considers the uses of history and what or whose history should be taught.

Feminist Principles of Classroom Interaction
"Feminism implies taking action to transform institutions and values."

Questioning Curriculum (questions)
"What should count as knowledge? ... Whose knowledge is it?"

Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum 1964

Democratic School Practices

Milwaukee, Wisconsin: The Struggle for a Decent School
George Wood describes La Escuela Fratney, a multicultural, bilingual elementary school.

Women in History - Women's Voices
Lori Fritsch. "One approach to creating a gender-sensitive atmosphere in a working-class urban high school."

Democratic Practices: Taking Steps Toward Democracy
Jean Ann Hunt. Seven Ohio and Illinois teachers describe "giant joyful footsteps" toward democratic practices in their classrooms.

Life and Modernity in L'Ecole Moderne of Celestin Freinet
Roberto Otero found that "life, and liberation, should not be expelled from the classroom or any other place."

Strategies for Change

Education for Democratic Empowerment: Towards a Green Action Plan
Bruce Lofquist develops recommendations for a Green educational practice and for the political strategy needed to achieve educational change.

Education and Democracy: Constituting a Counter-Hegemonic Strategy
Svi Shapiro argues for the reinvigoration of democratic vision, speaking for and to people in their communities, as the guiding principle for educational reform.

Neighborhood Control of Public Schools
Roger Copple says that neighborhoods, partly through local parent support groups, can become communities that design better schooling and themselves teach a better way to live.

The Destruction of Public Education and the Need for a New System
Michael Kolhoff discusses the need for militance in the creation of a new education system to replace "profit-center" education.

Popular Education in Schools?
Chris Cavanaugh presents "some disruptively-connective thoughts of a popular educator."

500+ Years of Learning

Working with the Grandmothers and Grandfathers
Brian Loucks: "to...work alongside...not as appropriators nor as manipulators but as Brothers and Sisters committed to healing and the care of all Creation."

The European Legacy
Thomas Sullivan on Syracuse and Onondaga Lake: "There has been a legacy of death and destruction of Mother Earth and all her precious life forms."

Perpetuating the Myths
John D. Lyle on how children, when they learn the truth, will feel cheated.

Halfbreed Girl in the City School (poem)
Jo Whitehorse Cochrane: "you stare out the window/turn an alphabet block in your hands"

I Lost My Talk (poem)
Rita Joe: "Let me find my talk/so I can teach you about me."

Review & Resources

Ira Shor's Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change (review)
Scott Marratto reviews a handbook for resistance.

Key Resources: a bibliography
Books, journals, and magazines on education for democratic empowerment.

Letters to Green Synthesis



Synthesis/Regeneration home page  |  List of authors  |  List of issues
Tables of contents:     9    10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17    18    19    20    21    22    23