education-theory

For such a small book, the author offers tremendous history and application of feminist liturgy to institutional settings. If you're looking for ritual or liturgy for social justice and/or affirmation of women in liturgical settings, this is a wonderful resource. I found it marvelously affirming of my liturgical and spiritual journey.

Wow! What a fun way to motivate kids about math and problem solving! I teach gifted and talented elementary school kids and they LOVE these problems. Started them out with the "bee family tree" and they were begging for more. This will be a staple in my classroom from now on!

Dr. Schindler has explored the very limits of the Unhappy Consciousness of our times. He is a combination of Hegel and Habermas in terms of developing a historical materialism for the third millennium. He does not mince words. He believes there is Truth, and emprically analyzes the factors that have led to the colonization of the last democratic public spaces in the Atlantic democracies. Professor Schindler conceives that through self-understanding, by changing our own selves, we can collectively arrive at a new consensus on what is an effective democracy where all interest groups and the res publica in general are empowered to exercise the sovereignty inherent in a global community. In particular, he is concerned with the emergence of the United States as the dominant imperial elect, drawn from our corporate world. However, his concepts are not static; he has redesigned historical materialism to incorporate elements of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, cultural anthropology, political philosophy, sociology, linguistics, and general social science precepts that delineate a political praxis with an emancipatory thrust. After reading this classic work created in the context of its own time, the reader will find it incumbent upon himself/herself not simply to philosophize about the world but to change it. Professor Schindler means that we are all responsible for each other through discursive will formation. Revolutionary violence however is an ultima ratio. Our own nation's founding fathers proved willing to die for their democratic convictions.

Schindler advocates a fundamental change in the capitalist order so as to free all peoples hitherto dominated by the powers that be in order to birth an international order with founding fathers and mothers who understand and can explain scientifically the contradictions within capitalism that disallow the emergence of social democracy. He is appalled by the inequitable distribution of economic resources that could permit all denizens of our planet not only a historical right to be free but to live and enjoy a life that is ethical, that is one worth having been lived. Too, he develops principles of right in which they can be applied to whole groups of individuals who have been deemed marginal to the societies in which the rule of law polices them. Hence, there is a levels of analysis shift in which he looks toward a world socialist republic and one where these heretofore outgroups, the wretched of the earth, seize through critico-practical activity their species liberated potential to be fully human. Dr. Schindler cuts through the cant of present-day democratic propaganda to allow the human condition to see for itself what it truly is. He exposes the pathologies at hand through a linguistic critique of the disturbed patterns of communication that emerge from the huge disparities of economic power that frustrate democratic impulses so necessary to invigorate the general population to appropriate what has been stolen from them by the social forces of modernity, that is particularly illustrated by the absolutist princes of plutorcracy who make the Robber Barons of yesteryear look like philanthropists. His arguments are nuanced and subtle in espousing a dialectic of conflict within the Atlantic republics. With the revolution in communications and information made readily available through computers that any person can afford to buy and put in his bedroom, an enlightened populace can educate each other continually as to what are the basic problems of our Zeitgeist.

In particular, Professor Schindler anathematizes nationalism as the toxic poison that has made the twentieth century the most lethal in history. It is not just that wars are more deadly in a technical and scientific sense. Man has experienced an unprecedented repression of his instinctual life. At the collective level, the stressors externally in the environment and internally in the psyche has led man to desublimate his socialization process in order to release pent-up aggressions at the collective level in ceaseless wars. This spells genocide for the human project and the extinction of Homo sapiens. There is the principle of hope in Schindler. He has faith that the Enlightenment ideals can be reignited with a combination of political activism, reeducation, and a radical reorganization of the world order where the nation state alienates its sovereignty to a supranational entity. Hence, the new world order and its practioners would systemically be engaged in a participatory democracy at the local level but sanctioned by a global government in a confederation of special public interest groups, women's organizations, unions, and ethnic minorities. The reference point ultimately would be an international society in which all peoples belong, work at meaningful jobs, enjoy general respect and recognition as a birth right, and practice politics in an intelligent manner so that structurally and functionally there would be an integration of social purposes internationally through the redesign of current corporate and special interest groups, and their representatives, that would be socialized so as to be all inclusive of every species interest to enhance not only the survivability of the human project but to make it a worthy one.

Dr. Schindler indicates the public policy remedies that would have to be entailed to make that a reality and not just wishful thinking. He applies an especial focus on the university subsystem that has sold out its production of knowledge, that should be the patrimony of mankind, to Fortune Five hundred corporations and the government to the detriment of achieving social justice for groups historically excluded from the American mainstream. Hence, he believes that given that historical failure of nerve to incorporate marginal groups there has to be new thinking on a universal plane to effect an outcome in which every individual experiences himself/herself to be at home in the universe. I suspect we will be hearing further from Dr. Schindler in the near future as to how we can programmatically institutionalize such a vision, while minimalizing the risks of a general war that is now threatening the collective security of the world with the local conflict in the Balkans that has reached a critical threshold of engulfing the world in a general conflagration. In the name of humanity, the United States to this date has only aggravated the situation with its ideological arrogance by rendering foreign policy an extension of military violence. As the only superpower in the world, its leaders have calculated that to protect their economic empire their armies must police the world. That policy, as of this moment, has proven to be an abysmal failure, only putting the Kosovars in deeper danger of being "ethnically cleansed." In the new world order, such militaristic misadventures and parapraxes will be governed by prudence. That is man's best hope is to learn collective self-restraint and respect for other culture's attending to their poltical problems in a manner suited to their customs and democratic practices. We should not expect nations to be molded in our image. That is idolatry of the meanest sort. The way out is to sublimate aggressions by collective undertakings that materially allow all to enjoy not just the goods and services of a productive world order but to partake of a style of life that can be described as that of living the good life. Such a definition will realize its form as people partake of the poltical process in an all inclusive manner.

An inspiring and fun account of what happens when institutions loses touch with their goals. A first hand account of the events of 64 from one who lived through it. Much better than most of the heady intellectual analysis already in print. This is all you need to know on the subject.

This is an excellent compilation of essays written by various people in education dealing with queer youth issues. The book is informative and offers concrete advice for incorporation of queer studies into the high school curricula. It's underlying theme lies in "normalizing" queer issues in schools so GLBTQ students begin to feel more accepted and may thus be happier in their high school experiences.

Very well written and comprehensive--every home school library should have this one!

Professor Good has written a timely and brave book. It is honest, clear and full of the detached passion of Orwell's incisive wit. It is indeed readable and concise in its just over 100 pages of careful prose. The mumbo-jumbo that has pervaded English departments in North America in the guise of so-called literary theory is the bane of clarity, intellectual growth and analytical rigour. It is, as Professor Good claims, anathema to the freedom of the individual and independent thought: precisely what a good liberal humanist education should aim for. What we have is ideology masked as education where seminar rooms have been turned into indoctrination sessions in which any attempt to be different through providing an argument against a vacuous idea by Derrida, a mystically misplaced one by Focault, or the Geertzean-induced glaze of Greenblatt is deemed 'reactionary' etc. In other words conform, or you're out. It is time for all clear thinking people to take a stand and fight for the right to be different as a responsible individual in society. Professor Good's book, though polemical, provides arguments in a systematic manner as to why that time is now. My only caveat to an otherwise excellent book, is at one point a slightly simplified portrayal of Nietzsche's ideas occurs. True, Nietzsche could be read as being misogynist, or anti-democratic etc, but he did say a lot of things to upset people: that was his style and part of his radical individualism. For in his inconsistencies and contradictions (deliberate or otherwise) Nietzsche provided an original view of the individual who could be strong by defying the norm, and those norms would include those set up as sacrosanct by the high priests of Theory today. But one can see why the simpler version of Nietzsche's thought was used in this instance, as it is an antinomy probably used as a rhetorical device to make more effective the stance against the Theorists' misappropriation of Nietzsche as defender of ideologically driven 'oppressed' people, genders and those of differing sexual orientation of the world, some of whom (I stress, some) have decided to again reinvent and misuse Nietzsche's dictum "the world is the will to power and nothing besides". The last group of people with a grievance who did the same thing were the Nazis.

This book offers a genuine, new approach to the educational discourse. By analyzing texts by Locke, Rosseau, Herbart and Hall, Bernadette Baker re-writes the history of education.

Baker reads these canonized educators through a brand new pair of glasses: Foucault's theory of power and Derrida's de-constructive ethics.

Through her elegant analyzis, she questions both common educational beliefs and our inherited, non-refelctive conception on Power, Pedagogy and the Child.

This book therefore prooves the intelligibility of "postmodern" educational research.

Information Literacy Instruction: Theory And Practice is an exhaustive textbook (450 pp.) with a CD-ROM supplement. Educator Esther Grassian and Librarian Joan Kaplowitz's purpose is to provide the reader through an in-depth discussion of the theory and practice of library instruction. Chapters range from basics to advanced studies. The basic topics in parts I and II include the history of user education, the psychology of active learning as applied to library teaching, critical thinking skills. The advanced topics of part III include assessing needs, setting goals, selecting instructional modes, handling copyright issues, designing electronic teaching materials, dealing with local politics on campus or elsewhere, and much more. The CD-ROM has a wide variety of useful materials: instructional mode web pages, an interactive database to select among modes, PowerPoint presentations, handouts for training or personal use, checklists and more. Information Literacy Instruction is very highly recommended for students of library science and practicing librarians, especially in our contemporary age where technology marches ever on!

This book is a very interesting book that i just enjoyed reading. it helped me realize a lot in how children use their minds and how one little experiment can go along way with teaching them their reading and writing skills. most kids that age want to be the best one in class in everything, and as they kept challenging themselves, they kept getting better at their inquiry skills. i recommend this book to any teacher out there that may seem to be looking for an experiment to try or get some ideas on how to get the children to become better in their writing and listenign skills.