Observations that led to the development of the book, "Meeting the Psychoeducational Needs of Minority Students: Evidence-Based Guidelines for School Psychologists and Other School Personnel" (Frisby, 2013), will be discussed. This will be followed by a summary of the wide variety of the difficult and complex issues embedded within…

The legacy of slavery and racism in America and the history of what John C. Calhoun and other Southern leaders of the 1800s called "our peculiar institution" has not gone unnoticed. Neither has the psychological damage that remains as baggage carried by the descendents of both the slave and the slave owner (Berry & Blassingame, 1982;…

A few years ago, in a tutorial in an advanced level undergraduate subject that she teaches--"Emotions, Culture and Community"--the author was a witness and participant in a pedagogical event that moved and provoked the class: It incited response-ability. This article is about that event, the meaning of response-ability, and the window…

The disturbances that took place across English towns and cities in 2011 raised significant debate and discussion about their causes and the motivations of the "rioters". Media and official explanations citing criminality and opportunism, repeated the now familiar narratives of cultural deficit, blaming absent fathers, poor parenting and…

James Scheurich argues that practices of policy--normalized over time through repetition--serve three purposes. They structure social problems for which policy is designed to address; construct certain people, implicitly or explicitly, as problem individuals; and shape policy solutions. Following Foucault, he offers what he calls Policy…

Autistic means a subject has limited affect or may be without affect altogether. Though traditionally individuals are described as autistic, the authors find it increasingly apparent that American society is becoming autistic as a whole, as citizens are desensitized to needs of neighbors near and far, losing the commensurate loyalty of being in…

Honored by the invitation to read and comment on the papers in this special edition, this final contribution is an appreciation of critical studies in education. This "C" word is dangerous in a neo-liberal world, but as the authors show there is much intellectually practical work that researchers and theorizers are doing. I take my…

In this essay, Huey-li Li inquires into how ecofeminist analyses of the woman-nature affinity call for the rectification of polarized conceptions of "nature." By attending to the interconnections between various forms of oppression, Li argues, ecofeminism sheds light on how gender ideology influences our worldview and the construction of…

Questions of censorship in education have been debated at length for decades, but it is only in recent years that the dialectic called public opinion has refined the issue in terms of the distinctions between guidelines and censorship. Despite the many differences with regard to inclusion and exclusion (including perspective, techniques, and…

Suggests that individuals vary in the degree of cortical development necessary to sustain functional empathy and that most people can be trained to counterbalance the more animalistic determinants of behavior. Concludes that blockage of functional empathy by power drives forms the basis of interpersonal and social tensions. (Author/GC)

Identifies novels as emotional histories of peoples in different times and places that are popular because they educate as well as stimulate. (CRH)

The history of the eugenics movement is reviewed. The authors conclude that, despite changed terminology and a shifting emphasis, advocacy of eugenics and its discrimination against poor and mentally retarded persons still persists today. (MC)

Social struggles that turn on race, gender, and sexuality are struggles for recognition. At least, this has been a widespread assumption for decades. Yet this assumption has come under critique of late. In this essay, Charles Bingham looks into the debate that surrounds the recognitive paradigm. He looks both at the general (noneducational)…

This article talks about the large achievement gap between children of color and their white peers. The reasons for the achievement gap are varied. First, many urban minorities come from a background of poverty. One of the detrimental effects of growing up in poverty is receiving inadequate nourishment at a time when bodies and brains are rapidly…

What is man? How do people differ in terms of their biological and psychological characteristics? What determines their thoughts, desires, and actions? These eternal questions, which have confronted thinkers and scientists since antiquity, relate directly to problems of upbringing. Under current conditions, it is increasingly obvious that to…