[COMM-ORG] New Book: *Our Schools Suck*

[Discussion list for COMM-ORG]

[ed:  congratulations to Celina, Gaston, Noel, and Jeanne on the new book.]

From:     celina su <celinasu at gmail.com>



Hi everyone,

I'm happy to announce that *Our Schools Suck*, a book I co-wrote with 
Gaston Alonso, Noel Anderson, and Jeanne Theoharis, is hot off the 
press. There's a book description and some reviews below. If it 
interests you, you can buy it at Amazon 
(http://tinyurl.com/our-schools-suck) or find it at an indie bookstore 
near you (http://tinyurl.com/d9v66e).

Very best wishes,
Celina

P.S. Yorman Nuñez, whose journey through NYC schools and education 
organizing I highlight in the book's introduction, is running for City 
Council! Check out his campaign at: http://www.nunez09.com

P.P.S. I hope you will forgive me for my rather uncouth self-promotion. 
If it makes you feel any better, I find it all quite nerve-racking.


Our Schools Suck

Now look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what 
we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out.… These people are fighting hard to 
be ignorant.… What the hell good is Brown v. the Board of Education if 
nobody wants it? 
   —Bill Cosby at a gala commemorating the Brown decision

My first day in middle school was horrible. I didn’t want to go to that 
school, so I cried the whole day.… I didn’t want to go to that school, 
because it was dirty and the people were dirty and I hated it there.… 
That’s when I first started to hate school.
   —Naima, an African American student in Los Angeles

[The adults tell us,] “You’re students, you have no place in the system, 
what are you doing here?” Yes, we do, and that’s what we’re demanding. 
Sometimes, it is hard, because people do not listen to us. But that’s 
another motivation to keep us going. We’ll go to the next person.
   —Rosalinda, a Latina student in the Bronx

In cities across the nation, many students are trapped in under-funded, 
mismanaged and unsafe schools. Yet, a number of scholars and public 
figures have shifted attention away from the persistence of school 
segregation to lambaste the values of young people themselves. Our 
Schools Suck forcefully challenges this assertion through in-depth case 
studies in East Los Angeles, Harlem, and the South Bronx. It gives voice 
to the compelling stories of African American and Latino students who 
grow disheartened by a public conversation that continually casts them 
as the problem with urban schools.

By showing that young people are deeply committed to education but often 
critical of the kind of education they are receiving, this book 
highlights the dishonesty of public claims that they do not value 
education. Ultimately, these powerful student voices remind us of the 
ways we have shirked our public responsibility to create excellent 
schools. True school reform requires no less than a new civil rights 
movement, where adults join with young people to ensure an equal 
education for each and every student.


Some reviews

The student voices in this striking book are an intervention into the 
adult-driven stereotypes of urban youth. The students offer stories of 
anger, challenge and hope. We all need to pay attention to these voices, 
and act on the corrective lessons they provide.
   —Jean Anyon, author of Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban 
Education, and A New Social Movement

Our Schools Suck is a passionate, hard-hitting critique of a re-emerging 
hurtful and offensive discourse on the alleged “culture of failure” 
among youth of color.  Rather than demonizing children, we need to take 
aim at the role that schools play in the creation and maintenance of 
social hierarchies.  This multi-voiced account is a soulful, if 
poignant, re-framing of what really is an urgent, national crisis to 
which we must all attend.
   —Angela Valenzuela, author of Subtractive Schooling and Leaving 
Children Behind

This book offers a clear and unmitigated analysis of the perspectives 
and voices of students who are trapped in schools that fail at meeting 
their intellectual and social needs.
   —Pedro A. Noguera, co-editor of Unfinished Business: Closing the 
Racial Achievement Gap in Our Schools


Check out more info (and contribute to our crowdsourcing project) at: 
http://www.ourschoolssuck.org/


-- 
.
Celina Su
.
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11210
.
Our Schools Suck | http://www.ourschoolssuck.org
.
Web page  |  http://www.burmeserefugeeproject.org/celinasu.html
.
Burmese Refugee Project  |  http://www.burmeserefugeeproject.org
.
.