Education Under Siege

Public spending on education is under attack. In this challenging book Aronowitz and Giroux examine the thinking behind that attack, in the USA and in other industrialized countries.

In Education under Siege, Peter Mortimore considers the UK education system as it is and as it might be. Concluding that the United Kingdom has some of the best teachers in the world but one of the most muddled systems, Mortimore proposes radical changes to help all British schools become good schools. He argues that the government should outlaw selection practices, integrate private schools into the state system, and establish processes to ensure that each school has effective teachers and a fair balance of students who learn easily and those who do not. In a concluding call to action, he asks readers who share his concerns to demand that politicians alter the course of education policy.

Public Education Under Siege argues for a democratic and egalitarian alternative to the test-driven, market-oriented core of current education reform. These short, jargon-free essays cover public policy, teacher unions, economic inequality, race, language diversity, parent involvement, and leadership.

Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think? Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position—a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In this book, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism. The author lays out Pakistanis’ own views on terrorist groups, on jihad, on religious minorities and non-Muslims, on America, and on their place in the world. The views are not radical at first glance, but are riddled with conspiracy theories. Afzal explains how the two pillars that define the Pakistani state—Islam and a paranoia about India—have led to a regressive form of Islamization in Pakistan’s narratives, laws, and curricula. These, in turn, have shaped its citizens’ attitudes. Afzal traces this outlook to Pakistan’s unique and tortured birth. She examines the rhetoric and the strategic actions of three actors in Pakistani politics—the military, the civilian governments, and the Islamist parties—and their relationships with militant groups. She shows how regressive Pakistani laws instituted in the 1980s worsened citizen attitudes and led to vigilante and mob violence. The author also explains that the educational regime has become a vital element in shaping citizens’ thinking. How many years one attends school, whether the school is public, private, or a madrassa, and what curricula is followed all affect Pakistanis’ attitudes about terrorism and the rest of the world. In the end, Afzal suggests how this beleaguered nation—one with seemingly insurmountable problems in governance and education—can change course.

In The Tower under Siege Brian Lewis, Christine Massey, and Richard Smith explore these important themes and issues from the varying perspectives of students, teachers, policy makers, and administrators. They describe the opportunities, changes, and policies developing in western universities and governments in response to the education revolution. While most studies of the education revolution tend to be highly polemical, ; The Tower under Siege occupies a middle space, identifying issues and policy processes used to manage change and create more opportunities for education.; The Tower under Siege will be of great interest to anyone concerned with, excited about, or worried by the expanding role of technology in higher education: teachers, researchers, students, parents, policy makers, and administrators.

Noted clinical psychologist Robert Firestone and his co-authors explore the struggle that all of us face in striving to retain a sense of ourselves as unique individuals.

For more than 50 years America's unrelenting hostility toward the Cuban Revolution has resulted in the development of a siege mentality among island leadership and its citizens. In a vibrant new look at Cuban-American relations, Keith Bolender analyzes the effects this has had on economic, cultural, and political life.

Computer game designers craft techniques to titillate children with sex and violence, while social media developers infiltrate and shape children's social and emotional worlds to compel them to spend more and more monetizable time online. America's schools are being transformed into profit centers while children are subjected to increasingly regimented teaching that thwarts curiosity and creativity, numbing the joy of learning. And children's chronic health problems, from asthma to cancer, autism, and birth defects, steadily escalate as thousands of new industrial chemicals are dumped into their environments. Nelson Mandela once sagely remarked that "there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way it treats its children." The problem today, as Joel Bakan reveals, is that business interests have made protecting children extremely difficult.