In her research article "State your defense!": Children negotiate analytic frames in the context of deliberative dialogue," Hauver offers important contributions to the field of elementary civic education that illuminate how young people apply various analytical frames to make collective decisions. First, I highlight significant…

At California State University Northridge (CSUN), Stevie Ruiz's students reflect the multiracial communities of Los Angeles County. The students are children of immigrants, working class, first-generation college students, and queer people of color. Students share a wealth of knowledge that is shaped by race, gender, sexual, and class inequality…

In this article, Christopher Emdin articulates what he considers a necessary stance on the education of urban youth of color who are deeply embedded in hip-hop. He brings singer/songwriter Stevie Wonder and Maxine Greene into the discussion to highlight the ways that these youth can be imagined differently and taught to their strengths and gifts,…

In this article Henry Giroux discusses corporate school reform movement and its detrimental impact on the public school system such as the closure of public schools in cities such as, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York to make way for charter schools. Giroux argues that corporate school reform is not simply obsessed with measurements that degrade…

Looking across the six articles in this issue, this paper argues that promiscuous uses of feminist methodologies offer a unique constellation of conceptual, pragmatic, material, and ethical strategies with which to understand and engage some of the social and cultural tensions that are occurring within and outside schools. It presents a…

In this paper I argue that education must be defined by our willingness to experience compassion in the face of others' suffering and thus by an ethical imperative, and seek to expose psycho-social processes of shame as dark matters that inferiorize and subjugate those expressing such compassion for the more-than-human world. Beginning with…

As people commemorate ACT UP and examine its memory in public cultures, the 2011 revival of "The Normal Heart" (TNH) and the rhetorical labor undertaken to evoke political emotionalities inside and outside of the theater provides one site for analyzing how direct action politics, both past and present, are imagined as a kairotic response to…

Peggy McIntosh (1988) famously unpacked what she called an "invisible knapsack" of privileges socially conferred upon whites, men, and heterosexuals (1988). She argued that not only are women and minorities at a disadvantage, but those with social power enjoy benefits that are both unearned and unjustified. We often accept those…

"In Search of April Raintree" by Beatrice Culleton Mosionier is a text that continues, over twenty-five years after its initial publication, to call its readers to reflect on racism in Canada and beyond. It is precisely this call that must incite readers also to exercise a vigilant critical consciousness and to seek out spaces in the…

Drawing from the work of philosophers Sylvia Wynter and Ian Hacking, in this conceptual article I argue why a humanizing critical approach to sociocultural knowledge is needed for teacher education, particularly in preparing teachers to work effectively with black students. In light of enduring concerns in teacher education with improving the…

The n-word is unique in the English language. On one hand, it is the ultimate insult- a word that has tormented generations of African Americans. Yet over time, it has become a popular term of endearment by the descendents of the very people who once had to endure it. Among many young people today--black and white--the n-word can mean "friend".…

"Elitism" is frequently invoked among the pantheon of "isms" actively to be disavowed. Indeed the charge of elitism often takes the form of reiteration, of identifying yet another manifestation of adherence to traditional standards steeped in discrimination by sex, race, and class, this time in their institutional guises in the merit credited to…

Gender justice includes three basic dimensions: gender equality, respect for difference, and free choice. In reality, schools construct and reproduce the gender injustice of the social culture through multiple dimensions that include the visible and the invisible curriculum, and the teacher's behaviour. In terms of gender justice, the social…

The present challenge for educationists and economists is to resolve pressing problems inherent in social choice and the technical framework of education. Among these challenges is the conflict between means and ends of educational production, the reliable development of human capital, and resolution to problems of social inequality. The authors…

In this article, the author refutes the arguments forwarded by William Deresiewicz in his much-discussed essay, "The American Scholar." Deresiewicz claimed that his background (as a student at Columbia and a former associate professor of English at Yale) rendered him incapable of a few minutes of small talk with the plumber who came to fix his…