Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 158
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4758-2721-7 • Hardback • October 2016 • $66.00 • (£51.00)
978-1-4758-2722-4 • Paperback • October 2016 • $34.00 • (£25.00)
978-1-4758-2723-1 • eBook • October 2016 • $32.00 • (£25.00)
Eric Shyman is an assistant professor of Child Study at St. Joseph’s College on Long Island, New York. He received his doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Stories we Tell: Narratives of Public Schooling
Chapter 2 Schooling as Sieve: Distinguishing between the Classes
Chapter 3 Schooling and the Real America: Immigrants and Americanization
Chapter 4 Schools of Thought: Systematizing the Study of Education
Chapter 5 The Flat Free World: Global Competitiveness and Equal Educational Opportunity
Chapter 6 Our Kids, Our Rules: Centralizing or Decentralizing America’s Schools
Chapter 7 A Study in Misrepresentation: Intellectual Interpretation of Policy Talk
Chapter 8 Schooling and the “Culturally Deprived”: Racism and American Schooling
Chapter 9 White Flight and Black Plight: Situating the Segregated Neighborhood
Chapter 10 Measuring Value: Intelligence Testing and the “Science” of Ability
Chapter 11 Able Minds, Able Bodies: Ableism and the Public School
Chapter 12 Segregation’s New Stripes: Race, Language, and Special Education
Chapter 13 You’re an American Now: Assimilation or Elimination for the un-American
Chapter 14 It’s a Man’s World
Chapter 15 Vicious Circles in Education Reform: Conclusion
Shyman takes on the most complicated and critical issue that we have spent a lot of energy avoiding: what are schools for? He covers a lot of terrain and skillfully helps us see ways in which we could move forward to make schools serve democratic ends. But will we? He doesn’t shy away from how difficult it will be and why it requires very different alliances and trade-offs than education policy has relied on in the past period of history.
— Deborah Meier, MacArthur Award-winning founder of the Central Park East Schools in New York and the Mission Hill School in Boston
Professor Shyman’s Vicious Circles is a must read for all concerned with the state of America’s educational system. This is a real story, exhaustively researched and told in an intelligent and compassionate voice. By looking back in time, Shyman has successfully propelled Kozol’s landmark work, “Savage Inequalities,” into the 21st Century. Regardless of one’s politics, the author’s perspective is compelling and highly relevant to any solution.
— Jay Silverstein, PhD, SDA, SAS
Eric Shyman delivers a powerful critique of educational reform in the United States, through exposing debilitating political, economic, and cultural values that historically have perpetuated a brutal racializing cycle of social and material oppression. By so doing, stagnating contradictions of American democracy that hinder emancipatory imperatives of citizenship and civic life are unveiled in ways that propel us to rethink strategies for educational transformation in the future. In an era when democratic rights hang in the balance, this brilliantly complex and indispensable treatise urges us to recall the vital significance of public education in the forging of a genuinely democratic society—where critical thought, dialogue, and public dissent are essential to an ethics of freedom and a praxis of genuine democracy.
— Antonia Darder, Leavey Endowed Chair of Ethics and Moral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University
Eric Shyman provides a wide-ranging portrait of the state of education, integrating contemporary issues with historical and political analysis. His account prioritizes the ongoing struggles over assimilation, equality, and control of educational decision making. This book offers an incisive guide to ongoing school reform debates and the structures that keep meaningful change from succeeding.
— Nancy Lesko, Columbia University