Schooling And Equality

American education as we know it today—guaranteed by the state to serve every child in the country—is still less than a hundred years old. It’s no wonder we haven’t agreed yet as to exactly what role education should play in our society. In these Tanner Lectures, Danielle Allen brings us much closer, examining the ideological impasse between vocational and humanistic approaches that has plagued educational discourse, offering a compelling proposal to finally resolve the dispute. Allen argues that education plays a crucial role in the cultivation of political and social equality and economic fairness, but that we have lost sight of exactly what that role is and should be. Drawing on thinkers such as John Rawls and Hannah Arendt, she sketches out a humanistic baseline that re-links education to equality, showing how doing so can help us reframe policy questions. From there, she turns to civic education, showing that we must reorient education’s trajectory toward readying students for lives as democratic citizens. Deepened by commentaries from leading thinkers Tommie Shelby, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Michael Rebell, and Quiara Alegría Hudes that touch on issues ranging from globalization to law to linguistic empowerment, this book offers a critical clarification of just how important education is to democratic life, as well as a stirring defense of the humanities.

First Published in 1992. This book grew out of a special issue of the journal Sociology of Education. There is no simple relation between education and gender equality. As with social class relations, schools both reinforce subordination and create new possibilities for liberation, and these contradictions occur at every level and in every aspect of education. Schools are sites of pervasive gender socialization, but they offer girls a chance to use their brains and develop their skills. To explore education and gender is to examine the bridge between the public world of occupations and the private world of families. Schools link the families from which young children come and the sex- and race-segregated occupational worlds to which they are sent. Because schools link public and private worlds, help to form consciousness, and structure inequalities, there are many ways to look at gender and education. In this book, the chapters break into four major topic areas. The first section analyzes gender and education from a comparative and historical perspective, the second section on ‘Diversity, Social Control, and Resistance in Classrooms’, third section, on ‘Gender and Knowledge’ and the final section on ‘families and school’.

In this book, first published in 1993, John Evans presents a guideline for challenging sexism, racism and elitism in programmes of physical education. Physical education in relation to social class, gender, race and disability is also discussed. The results arising show problems in the teaching of physical education, and examines the importance of physical education in the development of the child in today's educational system. It is the intention of the contributors to help practitioners clarify their thinking on concepts and issues involved in effecting equal opportunities in physical education. In turn, it is hoped that this will lead to better formation of physical education programmes which demonstrate both equality and equity. This title will be of interest not only to teachers but to students of sociology and education.

Considers the philosophical debates surrounding equality and education. >

This book debunks the argument that quality in education can only be achieved by limiting, or trading off, equality. The quality of schooling is a major issue for Third World nations across the globe. However there is no single measure which is universally accepted. Whether it is, as some economists might argue, an issue of the number of desks per classroom or one of national sovereignty is widely disputed. Defining equality in education becomes increasingly difficult in an era of globalization in which there exists a wide gap between rich and poor, both within and between nations. In the context of an international move towards New Right politics and neo-liberal economic ideologies, both the quality and equality of education are imperiled. This book argues that any worthy definition of quality education must include the interests and participation of the underprivileged.

Across OECD countries, almost one in every five students does not reach a basic minimum level of skills. This book presents a series of policy recommendations for education systems to help all children succeed.

In Teaching Equality, Adam Fairclough provides an overview of the enormous contributions made by African American teachers to the black freedom movement in the United States. Beginning with the close of the Civil War, when “the efforts of the slave regime to prevent black literacy meant that blacks . . . associated education with liberation,” Fairclough explores the development of educational ideals in the black community up through the years of the civil rights movement. He traces black educators’ connection to the white community and examines the difficult compromises they had to make in order to secure schools and funding. Teachers did not, he argues, sell out the black community but instead instilled hope and commitment to equality in the minds of their pupils. Defining the term teacher broadly to include any person who taught students, whether in a backwoods cabin or the brick halls of a university, Fairclough illustrates the multifaceted responsibilities of individuals who were community leaders and frontline activists as well as conveyors of knowledge. He reveals the complicated lives of these educators who, in the face of a prejudice-based social order and a history of oppression, sustained and inspired the minds and hearts of generations of black Americans.

Tinkering with the current educational system from within has not provided a just and equitable education for all children. In this book, acclaimed education theorist Joanne Larson poses basic questions about the nature and purpose of schooling. Proposing that what is needed is a new purpose that is more consistent with contemporary knowledge production processes—one that moves beyond the either/or binary of preparing workers/citizens in a competitive global economy or a democracy, Larson argues that the only real solution is to start over in U.S. education—the purpose of schooling should be to facilitate human learning, meaning making, and knowledge production toward just and equitable education for all. Radical Equality in Education offers a new ontological starting point and a new theoretical framing that would follow from it; articulates theoretical, curricular, pedagogical, and assessment principles that frame a real plan for fundamental change in American education, and presents examples of what these ideas might look like in schools and communities.