Against Schooling For an Education That Matters [Paperback]

In Against Schooling, Stanley Aronowitz passionately raises an alarm about the current state of education in our country. Discipline and control over students, Aronowitz argues, are now the primary criteria of success, and genuine learning is sacrificed to a new educational militarism. In an age where school districts have imposed testing, teachers must teach to test, and both teacher and student are robbed of their autonomy and creativity. The crisis extends to higher education, where all but a few elite institutions are becoming increasingly narrowly focused and vocational in their teaching. With education lacking opportunity for self-reflection on broad social and historical dynamics, Against Schooling asks How will society be able to solve its most pressing problems? Aronowitz proposes innovative approaches to get schools back on track..Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Education and Social Class* How Class Works in Education: A Memoir* Against Schooling: Education and Social Class* The World Turned Upside Down--AgainPart II: Higher Education or Higher Training?* Higher Education as a Public Good* Subaltern in Paradise* Academic Unionism and the Future of Higher Education* Should Academic Unions Get Involved in Governance?* The Decline of Labor EducationPart III: Toward Educational Renewal* Gramsci and Education* Paulo Freire's Radical Democratic HumanismReferences IndexStanley Aronowitz is a national treasure. Against Schooling is vintage Aronowitz. The book makes a brilliant and impassioned argument for the necessity of creating new knowledges and social and cultural practices that do not repeat the privileging hierarchies of previous generations, but enable individuals to become global as well as national citizens who refuse to accept the current regime of educational degradation. Aronowitz's call for a protagonistic effort to bring teachers in higher education together with elementary and secondary school faculty in a common fight is one that lSd