Schools of Democracy
Schools of Democracy

Author: Clayton Sinyai

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9780801472992

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In this new political history of the labor movement, Clayton Sinyai examines the relationship between labor activism and the American democratic tradition. Sinyai shows how America's working people and union leaders debated the first questions of democratic theory--and in the process educated themselves about the rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship. In tracing the course of the American labor movement from the founding of the Knights of Labor in the 1870s to the 1968 presidential election and its aftermath, Sinyai explores the political dimensions of collective bargaining, the structures of unions and businesses, and labor's relationships with political parties and other social movements. Schools of Democracy analyzes how labor activists wrestled with fundamental aspects of political philosophy and the development of American democracy, including majority rule versus individual liberty, the rule of law, and the qualifications required of citizens of a democracy. Offering a balanced assessment of mainstream leaders of American labor, from Samuel Gompers to George Meany, and their radical critics, including the Socialists and the Industrial Workers of the World, Sinyai provides an unusual and refreshing perspective on American labor history.

Schools of Democracy
Schools of Democracy

Author: Julien Talpin

Publisher: ECPR Press

Published: 2024-10-31

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1785520806

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Schools of Democracy offers a vivid analysis of the long-term impact of engagement in participatory budgeting institutions in Europe. While democratic innovations flourish around the world, there have been great hopes for their potential to revitalize representative government and solve the increasing apathy of the public. Based on a rich ethnographic study in France, Italy and Spain, this book shows how participatory institutions can encourage personal involvement, by creating the procedural and social conditions conducive to the formation of a competent and involved citizenry. Rather than deliberation itself, it seems that informal discussions and interactions between a diverse public allow mutual learning and the beginning of a political trajectory for people at the margins of the public sphere. However, this book also shows that citizens can become disappointed by the little decision-making power they are granted, as they leave the process often more cynical than before. Contains: A unique study on the long-term individual impact of engagement in participatory institutions. While most research deal with short-term impact, Schools of democracy addresses impact of participation after two years of engagement. Unique access to the black box of participatory institutions. While research on democratic innovations generally opt for an externalist perspective, Schools of democracy details the routine of deliberative interactions, showing how ordinary citizens speak up in public assemblies. From this perspective, the book offers incredibly rich empirical material – coming from ethnographic research – on how participatory democracy works. An original theoretical framework to the study of the individual impacts of participatory engagement. While most research are based on an implicit rational choice perspective, the pragmatist perspective adopted here sheds a different light on the studied phenomenon, stressing the co-construction of actors and their environment.

Education, Justice & Democracy
Education, Justice & Democracy

Author: Danielle Allen

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-03-04

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 022601293X

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Education is a contested topic, and not just politically. For years scholars have approached it from two different points of view: one empirical, focused on explanations for student and school success and failure, and the other philosophical, focused on education’s value and purpose within the larger society. Rarely have these separate approaches been brought into the same conversation. Education, Justice, and Democracy does just that, offering an intensive discussion by highly respected scholars across empirical and philosophical disciplines. The contributors explore how the institutions and practices of education can support democracy, by creating the conditions for equal citizenship and egalitarian empowerment, and how they can advance justice, by securing social mobility and cultivating the talents and interests of every individual. Then the authors evaluate constraints on achieving the goals of democracy and justice in the educational arena and identify strategies that we can employ to work through or around those constraints. More than a thorough compendium on a timely and contested topic, Education, Justice, and Democracy exhibits an entirely new, more deeply composed way of thinking about education as a whole and its importance to a good society.

Democracy's Schools
Democracy's Schools

Author: Johann N. Neem

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2017-08

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1421423219

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The unknown history of American public education. At a time when Americans are debating the future of public education, Johann N. Neem tells the inspiring story of how and why Americans built a robust public school system in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. It’s a story in which ordinary people in towns across the country worked together to form districts and build schoolhouses and reformers sought to expand tax support and give every child a liberal education. By the time of the Civil War, most northern states had made common schools free, and many southern states were heading in the same direction. Americans made schooling a public good. Yet back then, like today, Americans disagreed over the kind of education needed, who should pay for it, and how schools should be governed. Neem explores the history and meaning of these disagreements. As Americans debated, teachers and students went about the daily work of teaching and learning. Neem takes us into the classrooms of yore so that we may experience public schools from the perspective of the people whose daily lives were most affected by them. Ultimately, Neem concludes, public schools encouraged a diverse people to see themselves as one nation. By studying the origins of America’s public schools, Neem urges us to focus on the defining features of democratic education: promoting equality, nurturing human beings, preparing citizens, and fostering civic solidarity.

Democracy and Education
Democracy and Education

Author: John Dewey

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 1916

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13:

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. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

Free Schools, Free People
Free Schools, Free People

Author: Ron Miller

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2002-07-18

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780791454190

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The first historical account of the free school movement of the 1960s.

Democracy, Education, and the Schools
Democracy, Education, and the Schools

Author: Roger Soder

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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Democracy, Education, and the Schools argues that the most basic purpose of America's schools is to teach children the moral and intellectual responsibilities of living and working in a democracy. Leading scholars from the fields of education, history, political science, and anthropology explore what democracy is and what it means for preparing teachers and teaching students. They discuss critical questions about the relationship between the American democracy and a free public school system, including:* To what extent should the enculturation of the young into American democracy be a major function of the schools?* How can students best learn to understand and participate in American democracy?* What should the schools teach to convey to the young their rights and responsibilities as citizens?* What must teachers know in order to teach children their rights and responsibilities in an effective way?Roger Soder and his contributors ultimately show that there is a necessary relationship between democracy and the public school system--and privatization of the schools runs the risk of destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the American democracy.

Education and Democracy in the 21st Century
Education and Democracy in the 21st Century

Author: Nel Noddings

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2015-04-25

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0807772313

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"Educational philosopher Nel Noddings draws on John Dewey's foundational work to reimagine education's aims and curriculum for the 21st century. Noddings looks at education as a multi-aim enterprise in which schools must address needs in all three domains of life: home and family, occupational, and civic. She raises critical questions about the current enthusiasm for standardization, the search for 'one-best-way' solutions, and the practice of maintaining a sharp separation between the disciplines. Comprehensive in its scope, chapters examine the liberal arts curriculum, vocational education, restructuring secondary school, extracurricular activities, national and global citizenship, critical thinking, and moral education."--Back cover.

These Schools Belong to You and Me
These Schools Belong to You and Me

Author: Deborah Meier

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0807024740

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A challenge to narrow, profit-driven conceptions of school success and an argument for protecting public education to ensure that all students become competent citizens in a vibrant democracy In These Schools Belong to You and Me, MacArthur award–winning educator, reformer, and author Deborah Meier draws on her fifty-plus years of experience to argue that the purpose of universal education is to provide young people with an “apprenticeship for citizenship in a democracy.” Through an intergenerational exchange with her former colleague and fellow educator Emily Gasoi, the coauthors analyze the last several decades of education reform, challenging narrow profit-driven conceptions of school success. Reflecting on the trajectory of education and social policies that are leading our country further from rule “of, for, and by the people,” the authors apply their extensive knowledge and years of research to address the question of how public education must change in order to counter the erosion of democratic spirit and practice in schools and in the nation as a whole. Meier and Gasoi candidly reflect on the successes, missteps, and challenges they experienced working in democratically governed schools, demonstrating that it is possible to provide an enriched education to all students, not just the privileged few. Arguing that public education and democracy are inextricably bound, and pushing against the tide of privatization, These Schools Belong to You and Me is a rousing call to both save and improve public schools to ensure that all students are empowered to help shape our future democracy.

Schoolhouse Burning
Schoolhouse Burning

Author: Derek W. Black

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2020-09-22

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1541774388

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The full-scale assault on public education threatens not just public education but American democracy itself. Public education as we know it is in trouble. Derek W. Black, a legal scholar and tenacious advocate, shows how major democratic and constitutional developments are intimately linked to the expansion of public education throughout American history. Schoolhouse Burningis grounded in pathbreaking, original research into how the nation, in its infancy, built itself around public education and, following the Civil War, enshrined education as a constitutional right that forever changed the trajectory of our democracy. Public education, alongside the right to vote, was the cornerstone of the recovery of the war-torn nation. Today's current schooling trends -- the declining commitment to properly fund public education and the well-financed political agenda to expand vouchers and charter schools -- present a major assault on the democratic norms that public education represents and risk undermining one of the unique accomplishments of American society.