New book: learning power

[colist at comm-org.wisc.edu]

[ed: Congratulations to Jeannie and John on their new book. If you would 
like to review this book, please let me know. Preference will be given 
to those who offered last time but were declined.]

From: "Jeannie Oakes" <oakes at ucla.edu>

Learning Power: Organizing for Education and Justice

Jeannie Oakes and John Rogers
Teachers College Press
Pub Date: April 2006, 208 pages

In cities across the nation, low-income African American and Latino parents
hope that their children’s education will bring a better life. But their
schools, typically, are overcrowded, ill equipped, and shamefully
under-staffed. Unless things change dramatically, more than half the
students will never graduate and many will face a life of poverty-wage work.
Learning Power documents a radical approach to school reform that includes:

* Grassroots public activism informed by social inquiry as the best way
to realize Brown v. Board of Education’s promise of “education on equal
terms.”
* Activist young people, teachers, parents, and community organizations
working to improve schools in our nation’s poorest neighborhoods.
* The voices, images, and actions of people who are organizing to fight
for better schools.
* A comprehensive critique of the prevailing logic of American schooling
and an alternative logic based on justice and participatory democracy.

Here are the best arguments against those who want to give up on public
schools in America. Read Learning Power for clear examples of how ordinary
people can influence schooling through their organizing and social critique.
Jeannie Oakes is Presidential Professor in Educational Equity and Director
of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA). John Rogers
is the Associate Director of IDEA and the founding editor of Teaching to
Change LA, an online journal.Martin Lipton is Communications Analyst at IDEA
and a former public high school teacher.