Democracy & Education (E-Journal)
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Accountability to Whom? Testing and Social Justice. A Response to Imagining No Child Left Behind Freed from Neoliberal Hijackers
Full text linkIn response to Eugene Matusov’s article in this journal, Kritt addresses assumptions of the large-scale testing central to NCLB. Discussion of studies of urban kindergarten children that examine cognitive variability, including the assertion of ability, focuses on how this affects the student as a learner, as well as as a teacher. In contrast, Matusov questions root assumptions of schooling, casting engagement in socially valued activities as an issue of human rights. This view is criticized as overly socialized. It is argued that surface-level functioning in a cultural context is not sufficient for full participation in a democracy
Confronting Power: Success Isn’t Everything—But It’s Not Nothing Either. A Response to “Beyond the Catch-22 of School-Based Social Action Programs: Toward a More Pragmatic Approach for Dealing with Power”
Full text linkFehrman and Schutz contend that the fine balance between having students experience real-world obstacles to social change and having them learn how to navigate around those obstacles can be achieved by having adults both pre-select community action projects that are both possible and meaningful to ensure a modicum of success, and jump in and redirect wayward efforts when necessary to get them back on a trajectory aimed at a positive outcome. I agree. I also suggest that other factors are significant as well, namely the purposeful nurturing of a sense of community and hopefulness. Finally, I point out that adult intervention and democratic teaching are in no way mutually exclusive, especially by any standard John Dewey might have suggested
Mathematics as Thinking. A Response to “Democracy and School Math”
Full text linkMath education in the United States remains resistant to systemic change, and our country pays the price. Stemhagen\u27s article Democracy and School Math further confirms this trend. Despite repeated calls for reform, decades of research on how people learn, millions of dollars invested in teacher professional development, and years of politicized debate, the math wars rage on—between those who believe students have the capacity to construct their own mathematical ideas and others who insist mastery of the traditional canon must come first. Meanwhile, algebra failure among secondary students remains rampant and elementary education majors report the greatest rates of math anxiety of any college major. Adults and children alike joke about being terrible at math, seemingly unaware of the extent to which this innumeracy serves as a barrier to full participation in democracy as well as to the realization of their individual goals, hopes, and dreams. In the math education community itself, there is little discussion of the unique role mathematics can play in preparing students for democracy. In this short paper, I offer a more detailed conceptualization of democratic mathematics education and discuss the role of constructivism in bringing these ideas to fruition. I suggest that a shift in the power dynamic that characterizes most mathematics classrooms will be a key component in moving beyond the gridlock
Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher
Full text linkA review of the book Learning to Teach on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher, by Barbara Torre Veltri (Information Age Publishing, 2010)
Creating Communities: Working with Refugee Students in Classrooms
Full text linkThis article critically examines the reality of building community in public schools and specifically identifies the obstacles faced by teachers who try to create community with refugee students. The research in the article focuses on Ms. Patricia Engler, a teacher in a newcomer center for refugee students located in an urban setting. Engler created and fostered a sense of community for middle-school students in her classroom who often felt disconnected to their fellow students, their school, and the neighborhoods in which they lived, and was able to focus on work that she intuitively felt was right for her students based upon their specialized needs. The article also presents multiple ways of thinking about how to build community for all students through a description of different classroom activities and instructional strategies Engler employed in her classroom with newcomer children
Schooling for Democracy
Full text linkoai:democracyeducationjournal.org:home-1000There is a widespread movement today to prepare all students for college, and it is promoted in the name of democracy. I argue here that such a move actually puts our democracy at risk by forcing students into programs that do not interest them and depriving them of courses at which they might succeed. We risk losing the vision of democracy that respects every form of honest work and cultivates a deep appreciation of interdependence
Buscando la Libertad: Latino Youths in Search of Freedom in School
Full text linkDrawing from a two-year ethnographic study of Latino high school students engaged in youth participatory action research (YPAR), this article describes students’ quest for freedom in schools, locating their struggle within a larger effort to realize the democratic ideals of public schooling. Using Latino/a Critical Race Theory as a theoretical lens, the author demonstrates how popular discourse around the “achievement gap” often obscures the oppressive policies and practices implemented by educators that limit freedoms necessary for educational and personal development and profoundly influence the identities and life trajectories of Latino youth. The article concludes with an exploration of YPAR as a practice of educational freedom with the potential to transform the educational experiences and outcomes for Latino youth and other communities that have been traditionally underserved by schools
Building and Sustaining Hope. A Response to “Meaningful Hope for Teachers in a Time of High Anxiety and Low Morale”
Full text linkIn this essay, I respond to Carrie Nolan and Sarah M. Stitzlein’s article “Meaningful Hope for Teachers in a Time of High Anxiety and Low Morale” and support their argument for meaningful hope grounded in pragmatist philosophy. I agree that while hope is routinely called for in the educational literature, it is often done so in superficial and vacuous ways. Moreover, hope is often conflated with wishful thinking or naive optimism. A pragmatist vision of hope is different. It is a hope that compels us to act thoughtfully and creatively in the present so as to open up yet unimagined possibilities for the future—a hope that is generative, resourceful, engaged, and communal. To complement Nolan and Stitzlein’s vision, I argue that pragmatist hope also requires of us habits of community building and social and political activism to challenge unjust systems. Only when we act on both individual and systemic levels can we sustain the kind of pragmatist hope that is so necessary in schools