Battleground: One Mother's Crusade, The Religious Right, and the Struggle for Control of our Classrooms by stephen bates poseidon press, 365 pages, $24 The 1983 protest by a group of parents in Hawkins County, Tennessee, against certain stories and themes in the public school reading . . . . Continue Reading »
Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education by gerald graff norton, 214 pages, $19.95 Although he does not mention James Davison Hunter’s book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America , Gerald Graff might be taking up the challenge of Hunter’s final . . . . Continue Reading »
Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America by mark r. schwehn oxford university press, 143 pages, $19.95 I am a teacher of undergraduates at a major research university. I am also the mother of two recent college graduates. From both inside and out, I am keenly aware of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Half a century ago the word “discrimination” had already among its meanings the making of adverse distinctions with respect to persons. Today, following some fifty years of incessant attention to discrimination in that sense, it hardly supports any other. Such things happen to words, of course. . . . . Continue Reading »
An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and The Future of America by benjamin r. barber ballantine books, 370 pages, $20 “In the spring of 1988,” writes Benjamin Barber, a professor of political science at Rutgers, “[University] President Edward Bloustein gave a commencement . . . . Continue Reading »
Herbert Grover is the increasingly visible state superintendent of public instruction for Wisconsin and a man determined that no tax dollar shall be soiled by the hand of a parent on its way to school. The superintendent has fought vigorously against educational choice and is back in the papers with . . . . Continue Reading »
The span of Jaroslav Pelikan’s academic career approaches half a century. In these decades he has made himself the modern master of Dogmengeschichte, the worthy successor of the great Harnack (an achievement appreciated by David Lotz in the May issue of First Things). . . . . Continue Reading »
In her lively new study based upon fourteen schools of education across the country, Rita Kramer skewers two quite distinct forms of folly. One form of folly is the attempt by a few of the faculty whose classes she observed to make the classes occasions for political indoctrination so . . . . Continue Reading »
Will the flood of education books ever subside? Since 1983, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education declared us a “nation at risk,” there’s been a deluge. Wags have noted that we are menaced by a rising tide of education reports. Most fall into familiar categories. These . . . . Continue Reading »
The media have at last grasped the fact that test scores and graduation rates improve where schools are freely chosen by families. But what many people still fail to appreciate is that the case for choice in education goes much deeper than market efficiency and the hope to overtake Japan. Shifting . . . . Continue Reading »
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