Schooling the National Imagination


Book Description

What is the nature of textbooks produced by a postcolonial society and how do they shape the national citizen? How do they define social roles in society, and influence the way people look at themselves and others? In what way do textbooks reflect the framing visions about societal change? By exploring how language is critical to the development of a postcolonial nation and its shifting responses to global modernity, Schooling the National Imagination reflects on these profoundly important questions. Discussing the national education policy in general and the English language policy in particular, Shalini Advani tracks the inner dilemmas of a postcolonial society like India and the troubled history of its language politics. She looks at state-produced school textbooks, traces how English curriculum both reflects and constructs identity in particular ways, and examines classroom practice in schools. Advani goes on to consider the ways in which ideology shapes pedagogic practice, and how classroom transactions define the meaning of what is taught. Sensitive to theoretical discussions on how power and culture are made visible in textbooks and practice, the book moves between study of policy, textbooks, and classroom ethnography to provide a richly textured account of what language education does.







Timeless Learning


Book Description

Reinvent public schools with proven, innovative practices Our homes, communities, and the world itself need the natural assets our children bring with them as learners, and which they often lose over time on the assembly line that pervades most of the public education system today. We see no actions as more important in school than developing, supporting, and reinforcing children's sense of agency, the value of their voices, and their potential to influence their own communities. In Timeless Learning, an award-winning team of leaders, Chief Technology Officer Ira Socol, Superintendent Pam Moran, and Lab Schools Principal Chad Ratliff demonstrate how you can implement innovative practices that have shown remarkable success. The authors use progressive design principles to inform pathways to disrupt traditions of education today and show you how to make innovations real that will have a timeless and meaningful impact on students, keeping alive the natural curiosity and passion for learning with which children enter school. Discover the power of project-based and student-designed learning Find out what “maker learning” entails Launch connected and interactive digital learning Benefit from the authors’ “opening up learning” space and time Using examples from their own successful district as well as others around the country, the authors create a deep map of the processes necessary to move from schools in which content-driven, adult-determined teaching has been the traditional norm to new learning spaces and communities in which context-driven, child-determined learning is the progressive norm.




Against Schooling


Book Description

Stanley Aronowitz passionately raises an alarm about the current state of education in the US.




Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child


Book Description

Play dates, soccer practice, day care, political correctness, drudgery without facts, television, video games, constant supervision, endless distractions: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, in a bitingly witty style reminiscent of C. S. Lewis, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind. But Esolen doesn’t stop at pointing out the problem; he offers clear solutions as well. With charming stories from his own boyhood and an assist from the master authors and thinkers of the Western tradition, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child is a welcome respite from the overwhelming banality of contemporary culture. Interwoven throughout this indispensable guide to child rearing is a rich tapestry of the literature, music, art, and thought that once enriched the lives of American children. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child confronts contemporary trends in parenting and schooling by reclaiming lost traditions. This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent who cares about the paltry thing that childhood has become, and who wants to give a child something beyond the dull drone of today’s culture.




Private Readings in Public


Book Description

This book uses the set of relations announced by teachers' and students' readings of literary fictions as a -commonplace location- to interpret the experience of curriculum. In addition to illuminating the complexity of -schooled- readings of literature, "Private Readings in Public" provides insightful and provocative interpretations of the intertwined, overlapping, and ever-evolving intertextual relations that comprise events of curriculum. It will be of interest to those who wish to expand their understanding of the way in which interpretations of shared reading can become a -literary anthropology- where the identities of readers, writers, and teachers are continually re-invented during processes of reading, writing, and teaching."




Schooling Passions


Book Description

This book explores how regional and national senses of belonging are produced and transmitted in elementary schools in western India.




The Nation and Its Ruins


Book Description

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The Great British Dream Factory


Book Description

SPECTATOR BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Britain's empire has gone. Our manufacturing base is a shadow of its former self; the Royal Navy has been reduced to a skeleton. In military, diplomatic and economic terms, we no longer matter as we once did. And yet there is still one area in which we can legitimately claim superpower status: our popular culture. It is extraordinary to think that one British writer, J. K. Rowling, has sold more than 400 million books; that Doctor Who is watched in almost every developed country in the world; that James Bond has been the central character in the longest-running film series in history; that The Lord of the Rings is the second best-selling novel ever written (behind only A Tale of Two Cities); that the Beatles are still the best-selling musical group of all time; and that only Shakespeare and the Bible have sold more books than Agatha Christie. To put it simply, no country on earth, relative to its size, has contributed more to the modern imagination. This is a book about the success and the meaning of Britain's modern popular culture, from Bond and the Beatles to heavy metal and Coronation Street, from the Angry Young Men to Harry Potter, from Damien Hirst toThe X Factor.




Imagination First


Book Description

When imagination becomes habit, it can transform your work and your life The best corporations know that innovative thinking is the only competitive advantage that cannot be outsourced. The best schools are those that create cultures of imagination. Now in paperback, Imagination First introduces a wide-variety of individuals who make a habit of imaginative thinking and creative action, offering a set of universal practices that anyone can use to transform their life at work, home, and play. These 28.5 practices will enable anyone to become more imaginative and to teach others to do so as well?from corporate executive to educator to platoon sergeant. Bonus content includes Winning "practices" submitted by the public Guidelines for educators who want to cultivate creativity in their classrooms Expanded resource section The book is filled with illustrative stories of creative leaders, teachers, artists, and scientists that clearly illustrate the original practices and new material that shows how to bring imagination to life.




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