In education, the areas of critical policy studies, critical cultural studies, and critical curriculum studies all owe a good deal to a number of people. Among them are Paulo Freire, Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein, and Antonio Gramsci. Yet no such listing would be complete without the inclusion of Stuart Hall. The two books I…

Stuart Hall had a significant impact on critical analyses of rightist mobilizations in education. This is very visible in my own work, for example, in such volumes as "Official Knowledge" (2014) and "Educating the 'Right' Way" (2006). After describing an important series of lectures that Stuart Hall gave at the Havens Center…

Most nations--and nations to be--have a history of people asking critical questions about schooling and about the politics of knowledge in which it participates. Is it simply reproducing the ideological goals and cultural forms and content of dominant groups? Could schooling be used to raise serious issues about existing societies? Could it go…

What roles can and should teachers' unions play in the deliberations, debates, and conflicts over school reform in a time when education sits at the center of so much of our economic, political, ideological, and cultural tensions? Lois Weiner's new book, "The Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice," speaks…