Humanizing The Education Machine

A clear roadmap for the new territory of education Education in the U.S. has been under fire for quite some time, and for good reason. The numbers alone tell a very disconcerting story: according to various polls, 70% of teachers are disengaged. Add to that the fact that the United States ranks last among industrialized nations for college graduation levels, and it's evident there's a huge problem that needs to be addressed. Yet the current education system and its school buildings—with teachers standing in front of classrooms and lecturing to students—have gone largely unchanged since the 19th century. Humanizing the Education Machine tackles this tough issue head-on. It describes how the education system has become ineffective by not adapting to fit students' needs, learning styles, perspectives, and lives at home. This book explains how schools can evolve to engage students and involve parents. It serves to spread hope for reform and equip parents, educators, administrators, and communities to: Analyze the pitfalls of the current U.S. education system Intelligently argue the need to reform the current landscape of education Work to make a difference in the public education system Be an informed advocate for your child or local school system If you're a concerned parent or professional looking for a trusted resource on the need for education reform, look no further than Humanizing the Education Machine. This illuminating resource provides the information you need to become a full partner in the new human-centered learning revolution.

Through critical, qualitative, creative, and arts-integrated approaches, this collection aims to explore the co-curricular capacity of lived experience to re/humanize education.

From Dayton, Ohio, to Barcelona, Spain, this collection of essays from the Harvard Educational Review carries readers to places where people have first imagined--and then organized--their own educational responses to dehumanizing practices and conditions. Within a context of continued calls for education reform, Humanizing Education seeks to inspire a renewed sense of more fundamental improvements. The contributors offer historic examples of hopeful and humanizing educational spaces, practices, and movements that embody a spirit of possibility and change. The articles in this volume do more than challenge dehumanizing forms of education; these stories and voices from the past forty years revolutionize our understanding of education. In doing so, they seek to inspire a collective imagination for critical alternatives in education. Each piece articulates what it means to participate in a humanizing pedagogy, one that engages youth and adults together in an ongoing process of transforming selves and the world. -- from the editors' introduction Contributors include Montse Sánchez Aroca, William Ayers, Kathy Boudin, Fernando Cardenal, Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade, Marco Garrido, Jay Gillen, Maxine Greene, Kathe Jervis, Nancy Uhlar Murray, Valerie Miller, Wendy Ormiston, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, Vanessa Siddle Walker, Arthur E. Thomas, and Travis Wright. Edited by Gretchen Brion-Meisels, Kristy S. Cooper, Sherry L. Deckman, Christina L. Dobbs, Chantal Francois, Thomas Nikundiwe, Carla Shalaby

A few years ago, a book of this type and style could not or would not have been written. This is because, until a few years ago, no real in-depth knowl edge of computers and computerized equipment was at the disposal of those with a nonscience, nonquantitative background. Some people from other disciplines-including business, the arts, and the social sciences-had been working with such equipment, but they had "gone over" and tended to be even more computer-conscious than those whom they served. It is only comparatively recently that people like Elisabeth Gerver with a firm arts and adult education background first of all became knowledgeable and then remained true to that background. To her eternal credit, Elisabeth Gerver, when she became involved, avoided being sucked into the world of the jargon or even that of the thinking of the computer scientists and the electronic engineers. On the contrary, she insisted that she was an educated woman dealing with other educated people, and that they would all speak in the language of everyday discourse. It worked! One consequence of her experience and her thought is this remarkably lucid and readable book. It will prove to be of immense value to many in the world of adult and community education. But the beneficiaries will run beyond those sectors of society. Other people with a nonscience, nonquantitative background will surely find it of immense value in their early, inevitably hesitant and faulty, grappling with the world of new technology.