Reforming American education from the bottom to the top / edited by Evans Clinchy.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Clinchy, Evans.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Educational change--United States.

Educational change.

United States.

Education--Aims and objectives--United States.

Education.

Education--Aims and objectives.

Educational planning--United States.

Educational planning.

Physical Description:

xviii, 206 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Portsmouth, NH : Heinemann, [1999]

Summary:

"What kind of school would you run if you didn't have to worry about getting students into college?" Here, some of the nation's most respected and controversial theorists, policymakers, and practitioners offer their vision of how to prepare children for the "incalculable future" foreseen by editor Evans Clinchy. Their specific methods are diverse and provocative. But the basis for their arguments is the same: So long as our colleges and universities maintain their constrictive, authoritarian, and antidemocratic admissions policies and educational practices, elementary and secondary schools necessarily will be straightjacketed. Only through a thorough and collaborative reform--from kindergarten through graduate school--can meaningful change take place.

The ramifications of such radical reform would be enormous, yet enticing: Deborah Meier suggests that progressive kindergartens--not the scholarly disciplines of higher academe--should be the model for reinvigorating American education. Susan Ohanian and Joe Nathan explore what elementary classrooms might be like if this happened. Nel Noddings weighs the pros and cons of a college-bound high school curriculum. Higher education specialists like William Coplin and Patrick Shannon speculate on how colleges and universities would change to serve the graduates of reformed elementary and secondary schools. Nona Lyons considers how teacher training would be transformed. And sociologist Alejandro Sanz de Santamaria looks at the impact of education reform on political life.

These discussions touch on every issue in American education today--from standardized testing to decentralization to inquiry learning and beyond. This is of necessity and by design, for it is only through such far-ranging, synergistic inquiry that we can effectively reinvent American schools--from the bottom to the top.

Contents:

Introduction: Preparing for an Incalculable Future vii

Part I Education in the Kindergarten Tradition

Introduction: Setting the Scene from the Front Lines 1

1 Supposing That... / Deborah Meier 3

2 Is That Penguin Stuffed or Real? / Susan Ohanian 15

3 Changing College Admissions Requirements Will Help Change High Schools / Joe Nathan 31

Part II Some Further Problems of Higher Education

Introduction: The Problems of Context and Authoritarianism 41

4 Education for Political Life / Alejandro Sanz de Santamaria 43

5 Higher Education Against the Public Good: How Future Generations Are Conditioned to Serve Only Themselves / William D. Coplin 53

6 The Loss of Context and Connection / Evans Clinchy 71

7 Daydreams Believer / Patrick Shannon 94

Part III The Prospects for the Reform of American Education from Kindergarten Through Graduate School

Introduction: Is Reform Possible? 111

8 Rethinking the Benefits of the College-Bound Curriculum / Nel Noddings 113

9 Reimagining Teacher Education: Through a Kindergarten Looking Glass / Nona Lyons 123

10 The Problems and Possibilities of Contextualized Educational Research in the Democratic Tradition / Evans Clinchy 136

11 University-Assisted Community Schools and Strategic Academically Based Community Service / Ira Harkavy, John Puckett 150

12 Audaciously Preparing for Uncertainty and Change: A New Vision for American Education? / Evans Clinchy 171.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

032500174X

OCLC:

41445795