Seeking Higher Ground

Ever wonder why your thinking gets sidetracked and confused? This book addresses many assumptions we make that can lead to confusion and misunderstandings about the world and our role as Christians in the world.

Hurricane Katrina of August-September 2005, one of the most destructive natural disasters in U.S. history, dramatically illustrated the continuing racial and class inequalities of America. In this powerful reader, Seeking Higher Ground, prominent scholars and writers examine the racial impact of the disaster and the failure of governmental, corporate and private agencies to respond to the plight of the New Orleans black community. Contributing authors include Julianne Malveaux, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Ronald Walters, Chester Hartman, Gregory D. Squires, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Alan Stein, and Gene Preuss. This reader is the second volume of the Souls Critical Black Studies Series, edited by Manning Marable, and produced by the institute for Research in African-American Studies of Columbia University.

Pairing in-depth journalism with historical perspectives, this book makes a compelling case for a natural solution to the growing problem of flooding. With Seek Higher Ground, environmental writer and former land-use planner Tim Palmer explores the legacy of flooding in America, taking a fresh look at the emerging climatic, economic, and ecological realities of our rivers and communities. Global warming is forecast to sharply intensify flooding, and this book urges that we reduce future damage in the most effective, efficient, and equitable ways possible. Through historical narrative, rigorous reporting, and decades of vivid personal experience, Palmer details how our society’s approach to flood control has been infamously inadequate and chronically counterproductive. He builds a powerful argument for both the protection of floodplain open space and for programs that help people voluntarily relocate their homes away from high-water hazards. Only by recognizing the indomitable forces of nature—and adapting to them—can we thrive in the challenging climate to come.

This book provides an opportunity for those who desire a closer walk with God through meditation and reflection. It is my prayer that "Seeking Higher Ground" will be the catalyst to propel everyone who reads it, to truly seek higher ground. The twenty-one meditations are varied to allow each person to have different experiences through their meditation process. It is my further prayer that all seekers cultivate a desire to move to a higher level in their Christian experience.

This book reviews what the authors term advocacy research in literacy education-research that explicitly addresses issues of social justice, equity, and democracy with the distinct purpose of social transformation. It surveys what educational researchers who are working for social justice have accomplished, describes current challenges, and outlines future possibilities. The first section maps the terrain of advocacy research in literacy education. The authors group this large and expanding body of research into four categories: Critical Literacy(ies); Radical Counternarratives in Literacy Research; Literacy as Social Practice; and Linguistic Studies. Each chapter describes the research area, traces its history, provides example studies, and assesses the contributions of research to advocacy work now and potentially in the future. The second section provides a deeper consideration of challenges to the field of advocacy research and suggests future directions for research and scholarship; this section reflects the need to complicate and trouble the terms and relations between and among social justice, ethics, democracy, freedom, and literacy. As a whole, this book is a response to the current popular understandings of literacy education that limit the efficacy of advocacy work in these troubled times-understandings that support the proliferation of standardized testing, teacher testing, and scripted lessons and programs, along with the privileging of particular forms of research. Intended for those who work or soon will work in literacy education-students, teacher educators, researchers, and practitioners-this book represents the authors' belief that it is time for advocacy workers to strengthen and intensify their efforts to promote the most principled, effective literacy education for democratic life. It is their hope that this book will contribute to such an effort.

Bringing together scholars, public intellectuals, and activists from across the field of education, the Handbook of Public Pedagogy explores and maps the terrain of this burgeoning field. For the first time in one comprehensive volume, readers will be able to learn about the history and scope of the concept and practices of public pedagogy. What is 'public pedagogy'? What theories, research, aims, and values inform it? What does it look like in practice? Offering a wide range of differing, even diverging, perspectives on how the 'public' might operate as a pedagogical agent, this Handbook provides new ways of understanding educational practice, both within and without schools. It implores teachers, researchers, and theorists to reconsider their foundational understanding of what counts as pedagogy and of how and where the process of education occurs. The questions it raises and the critical analyses they require provide curriculum and educational workers and scholars at large with new ways of understanding educational practice, both within and without schools.

Us versus them—it’s one of the oldest stories ever told, and we keep finding new ways to tell it. The conservative versus progressive cultural holy war over social justice, reconciliation, unity, and politics is the most recent version of the story, and our lives are increasingly defined by it. Which side are you on? Do you want justice or friendship? Diversity or unity? Victory or communion? But what if this alleged holy war is better understood as an opportunity for a humble and creative collaboration? What if conservatives and progressives tell a better story together? What if we seek higher ground instead of partisan or middle ground? What if God doesn’t want to pull us to the right or to the left or to the middle? What if God wants to pull us up? Us for Them suggests that instead of hunkering down into ideological trench warfare, Christians can ascend into the elevation of the kingdom by practicing God’s fierce but friendly justice in an unfriendly and unjust world. Because Christianity is a faith of justice and friendship—not one or the other.