New Books: Education

Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan's presidency ushered in a War on Black Children. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today, there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now passed off as justice.

Born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy, Maria Montessori would grow up to be self-confident and strong-willed. At around age thirty, Montessori was struck by the work being done with children from the slums of the San Lorenzo neighborhood, and realized what she wanted to do with her life: change the school, and therefore the world, through a new approach to the child's mind. She would garner acclaim and establish the influential Montessori Method, which is now practiced throughout the world. The Child Is the Teacher is a fresh, comprehensive biography of the pioneering educator and activist who changed the way we look at children's minds.

This book probes the complex interplay of federal, state, and local policies and illustrates how government actions have, over time, contributed to the long-term slide of U.S. educational attainment. Declining federal and state funding of public higher education has forced institutions to revise their financial models, passing costs directly through to students. Experts in education policy, the authors point out how the unintended consequences of today's funding model deny an ever-increasing portion of the population important educational and professional opportunities.

The role of the liberal arts in higher education has been blamed by some for making college expensive, impractical, and even worthless. Defenders argue that liberal arts education makes society innovative, creative, and civic-minded. But these qualities are hard to quantify, and many critics of higher education call for courses of study to be strictly job-specific. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Detweiler, drawing on interviews with more than 1,000 college graduates aged 25 to 65, offers empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education.

This edited volume serves as a place for teachers and scholars to begin seeking ways in which popular culture has been effectively tapped for research and teaching purposes around the country. The book gives a detailed examination of teaching with popular culture on many levels. PreK-12 teachers and teachers in community colleges and university settings share their successful practices, as well as show how universities can prepare teachers to use popular culture with their future PreK-12 students.

School has long meant much more than an education in America. 30 million children depend on free school meals. Schools are, statistically, the safest physical places for children to be. They are the best chance many children have at finding basics like eye exams, safe housing, and mental health counseling. The cost of closing our schools for so long during COVID has not yet been fully reckoned with. Anya Kamenetz shows that the roots of our crisis run far deeper than COVID. She follows families across the country as they lived through the pandemic, but she also dives deep into the political history that brought us to this point.

Dwyer and Peters examine homeschooling's history, its methods, and the fundamental questions at the root of the debate over whether and how the state should oversee and regulate it. The authors trace the evolution of homeschooling and the law relating to it from before America's founding to the present day. In the process they analyze the many arguments made for and against it, and set them in the context of larger questions about school and education. They then tackle the question of regulation, and they do so within a rigorous moral framework that has a clear-eyed assessment of what rights and duties children, parents, and the state each possess.

In Ungrading, fifteen educators write about their diverse experiences going gradeless. Some contributors are new to the practice and some have been engaging in it for decades. Some are in humanities and social sciences, some in STEM fields. Some are in higher education, but some are the K-12 pioneers who led the way. Based on rigorous and replicated research, this is the first book to show why and how faculty who wish to focus on learning, rather than sorting or judging, might proceed. It includes honest reflection on what makes ungrading challenging, and testimonials about what makes it transformative.

American Indian Education / indigenous education is still faltering today and is not producing significant differences in results where school practices follow those for the dominant culture. Inroads have been made in some classrooms / schools where Culturally Responsive / Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) is practiced. However, the drop-out rates for American Indian / indigenous populations are still extremely high in comparison to other ethnically diverse groups of students. There are two factors that can make or break indigenous students' abilities to be resilient in the face of many educational negatives in their lives.

Even the best, most accomplished teachers make (sometimes big) mistakes. But as the experts and authority figures in their classrooms, teachers face myriad pressures to have all the answers and, in some cases, to work miracles. This book brings together first-hand stories from classrooms across the globe of hard-won lessons stemming from teachers' mistakes and failures both small and colossal to show how becoming expert actually necessitates failure. It's through their mistakes that the most successful people arrive at greatness.