Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming Our Schools: Reversing Privatization and Recovering Democracy in America's Public Schools [Hardcover]

Reclaiming Our Children,Reclaiming our Schools offers both a comprehensive censure of the current corporate interest in privatizing public schooling as well as a framework for attaining meaningful education reform based in democracy and the combined will of the public. Using current research and sound philosophical and ethical arguments, Shyman argues for more attention to be paid to teacher expertise, participatory democratic practices, genuine valuation of ethnic and cultural diversity, attention to global citizenship and cooperation, and the prevention of private profit-based interests in public schooling policy and practice. By returning the power of the public school to the public and the true experts, public schools can become the most important tool in securing genuine cultural growth leading to a stronger, safer and more cooperative nation and world.Eric Shyman is an assistant professor of Child Study at St. Josephs College on Long Island, New York. He received his doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University.

In this concise and riveting analysis of public schooling, Eric Shyman powerfully makes the case for true education reform. With the level of honesty and clarity of thought desperately needed to address the crisis of American education, Shyman takes the reader through a series of stimulating arguments as he lays out a plan for socially just educational reform. In so doing, he shows us how we might reclaim not only our children, but our democracy. Shyman's handbook for the transformation of education is essential reading for anyone who cares about our children and the schools who shape them. Robin DiAngelo, author, White Fragility

Timely and provocative, this book traces the private takeover of American public schools, a movement that has sacrificed the democratizing potential of public education and exacerbated the academic and social wellbeing of children from marginalized groups. Going beyond critique, Eric Shyman offers an inslÉ