To rise to the challenges of postmodern culture, Carlson argues, progressives will need to leave the safe harbors of what is familiar and comfortable. A new progressivism can only be forged of a fundamental re-thinking and re-mythologizing of democratic education. Drawing upon cultural studies perspectives, Carlson interrogates philosophy through p
This book chronicles the live of a Peace Corps volunteer in Libya in the late 1960s, including the first American account of living through the revolution that brought Gaddafi to power. The author moves from campus protests at the University of Washington in the spring of 1968, to Peace Corps training in Utah and the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, to living and teaching in an isolated village in Libya, to a European summer vacation, to the revolution that led to charges that Peace Corps volunteers were CIA agents, to returning to the U.S. in October, 1969, to witness the anti-war moratorium on the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C. The heart of the story is the author’s own evolving journey as a teacher, during which time he began to question both the official curriculum of English instruction and the broader purposes of teaching for liberation. This is also a story about the author’s education and re-education in Libya as he struggles to learn the rules of everyday life (including the rules of gender and sexuality) as a stranger in the village, and as he begins to see and appreciate the world through somewhat different eyes. Part of his education involved a reconstruction of the history of the village in terms of wave after wave off European colonizers----from the time of the Romans, to the Italian fascist colonizers, to the liberation of the village by the British chasing Rommel’s troops across the desert, to its decline, renaming, and reappropriation as an Arab village. The author brings all this up to the late 1960s by describing the role of U.S. foreign policy in the “development” of Libya in league with global oil, and with the support of the largest air base outside the continental U.S. near Tripoli. This is, finally a coming of age story--about a young man who was desperately looking for something to believe in and live for, and more pragmatically looking for a way out of the draft and Vietnam, and out of an America that seemed to be slipping into collective madness. It is a story (like all coming of age stories) about setting off on a great youthful journey of self-discovery, and a rekindling of the human spirit. Audiences for this book include: college students (undergraduate and graduate) in education, cultural studies, and Arabic studies; former Peace Corps volunteers and those interested in the Peace Corps and its history; readers interested in recent developments in Libya looking for some historical perspective on how Gaddafi came to power and why the revolution turned anti-American; and all those interested in a first-hand account of what America was like at the end of a decade ushered in with Kennedy idealism and the Peace Corps. A powerful story of exile and a search for home, Volunteers of America is the Odyssey of a generation. Awakening to a world in flames, inspired by visions of liberation erupting everywhere, Dennis Carlson heard the chords of freedom echoing all around him and faced the question: Which side are you on? Here is Carlson’s poignant and still timely answer to that question. - Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days and many other books on education, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago.
Challenging the conservative political agenda for school reform, Dennis Carlson offers ideas for rethinking democratic progressive ideas in education given the new cultural conditions of a postmodern society. He explores what democratic education must be to meet the demands of learning to work in an ""information age"" and argues for the importance of sexuality education, detracking and multicultural education. The book attempts to reappropriate democratic progressive approaches to education consistent with dramatically new times that call for new ways of thinking about equity, freedom and community. Above all it demonstrates how public participation in educational debates contributes to a healthy and robust public school system for all students.
Advocates of the ‘back-to-basics’ movement argue that a basic skills programme ensures that students are educated to a minimum level of literacy required to enter the labour force. Critics charge that these efforts only increase school bureaucracy and undermine teachers’ autonomy in the classroom. First published in 1992, this book moves beyond the rhetoric surrounding the basic skills debate by providing a thorough yet critical examination of urban education, urban school reform, and teachers’ work culture. Beginning with a sparkling theoretical discussion of the problems and pitfalls of back-to-basics reform efforts, author Dennis Carlson argues persuasively that the movement’s exclusive emphasis on functional literacy skills rather than higher-order thinking assures that students will remain on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. He then proceeds with an empirical study of two urban high school districts in which he documents the latent effects of back-to-basics on teachers’ work lives as well as staff-administration clashes over efforts to implement restructuring programmes. This book offers a sensible and sophisticated treatment of some of the important issues facing urban education and will be of great interest to anyone working in Education.
The essays in this volume explore the educational implications of unsettling shifts in contemporary culture associated with postmodernism. These shifts include the fragmentation of established power blocs, the emergence of a politics of identity, growing inequalities between the haves and the have-nots in a new global economy, and the rise in influence of popular culture in defining who we are. In the academy, postmodernism has been associated with the emergence of new theoretical perspectives that are unsettling the way we think about education. These shifts, the authors suggest, are deeply contradictory and may lead in divergent political directions?some of them quite dangerous. Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy examines these issues with regard to four broad domains of educational inquiry: state educational policy and curriculum reform, student identity formation, the curriculum as a text, and critical pedagogy. The book contributes to the dialogue on the forging of a new commonsense discourse on democratic educational renewal, attuned to the changing times in which we live.
Brandy Phillips has one of the greatest singing voices ever. People come to church for one reason - to hear her sing. Everything changes when she auditions for a TV singing show. Vanessa Carlson and Dennis Davis have been best friends since the ages of six and seven. At their senior year of high school they both start falling in love with each other. The problem is that Vanessa is going to a college in a different state. Jody Clark is dating rock n' roll star Derek Perkylinski of the band On A Mission. Their relationship is great, but the one problem is that Derek is always on the road or recording another CD.
Our Daily Breach: Exploring Your Personal Myth Through Herman Melville’s Moby-Dickoffers both a way of understanding what has generally been called the greatest novel of the American myth while simultaneously exploring one’s own personal myth. Its added feature is that it is an interactive book in allowing reader’s to meditate on one question per page for each day of the year and to undercover many facets of one’s personal myth through cursive writing. It has been long understood that classics of literature are their own form of therapy in that they frequently tap into some of the most shared concerns of being human. This book makes such a connection between our interior life and the plot of the story through the power of mythopoiesis, namely the imaginative act of giving a formative shape to the myth we are each living in and out through the power of analogy, correspondence or accord with the classic poem. Using Melville’s epic of America, the reader may enter the deepest seas of his/her own mythic waters to realize and give language to the myth that resides in our daily plot line.
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