Learning and Social Difference [Hardcover]

Exploring how global changes affect education today, in the classroom and in local, national, and international contexts, this book explores the future of education's capacity for effectiveness in multicultural and multilingual contexts. The chapters deal with lifelong learning (a critique), immigration, antiracist education, parental involvement in schools, national curricula, Paulo Freire's legacy, insights from the work of Lorenzo Milani and the School of Barbiana, and Gramsci's writings on the school. There are both theoretical and empirically grounded chapters in this volume. Borg and Mayo have written a book that has charted a new and vital space for a critical analysis of education at a moment in history that demands an acute political and pedagogical attention
from the Foreword by Peter McLaren, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA

Borg and Mayos book examines, among other things, the historical and ideological impress of a countrys colonial past along with the increasing pressures of globalization upon its contemporary democratic aspirations. It also stretches the area of inquiry to discuss educational policy making and lifelong learning in Europe as well as the pedagogical insights derived from Antonio Gramsci and Lorenzo Milani and the reinvention of Freires ideas in a postcolonial southern context. Taking as its overall theme the need for greater critical pedagogical action to counter a range of entrenched antidemocratic ideologies and assumptions, their work stands as a fitting exemplar of the type of critical educational practice they seek to elicit. Because of this, it is a potent and valuable resource that will both educate and inspire.
Dr. Deb J. Hill, University of Waikato, New Zealand

Vividly critiquing the seductive nature of neoliberal influences on educational policy, pedagogy, curriculum, and reforms, the essays in Learning and Social Difference demonstrate exemplary work inló,