Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader

by William Ayers (Editor), Jean Ann Hunt (Editor), Therese Quinn (Editor)

Democracy and Education has been the leading voice of the nineties for engaged teaching. Teaching for Social Justice collects the best of the journal. Featuring a unique mix of hands-on, historical, and inspirational writings, the topics covered include education through social action, writing and community building, and adult literacy. An extensive "teacher file" and resource section survey teaching tools from curricula to activist-oriented websites. Next in The New Press's award-winning education publishing program, Teaching for Social Justice engages parents, citizens, students, and teachers in a conversation about the basis for education in a democracy.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction, Social Justice

326 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

William Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), education activist, and bestselling author of Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom (with Rick Ayers), To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, Third Edition, and To Teach: The Journey, in Comics (with Ryan Alexander-Tanner).

Reviews

[CTEP]

Teaching for Social Justice is an extremely accessible collection of personal narratives and essays from the late 90s. This book really moved me, out of all the dry education books I’ve been reading over the past few months. It was definitely the 5 sections of “Activist Forums” – teachers describing their experiences teaching for social on two pages or less – that did me in. Many of these teachers and intellectuals are quite well known figures (Anna Deveare Smith, Jonathon Kozol) and the combination of their voices intermingled with lesser known teachers is very powerful. These succinct, simple sketches of so many different dedicated lives are hopeful, poignant, poetic and sharply honest. Matter-of-fact, these educators teach they way they do because that is the choice they make, daily. This is relevant to my work because, well, it’s part of the purported mission of our program, right? The degree of relevancy is small and is a battle, but I think that we all have our toes in the water. To think about our programs, our career/activist futures, the people we interact with, and our own visions, within a social justice framework, this we do constantly and I’m not sure for what other purpose we are doing what we are doing. It may be mostly a critical relationship, as it is for me, but I hope there is a relationship for everybody. 3) Would you recommend this book to other corps members? This book is very accessible and I suspect other members would enjoy it. Not a lot of world-shaking theorizing but plenty of food for thought. Lots of personal narratives and storytelling.

[Synthia Salomon, Ed.S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

6 principals of pedagogy: enable significant work within communities of learners, build on what students bring to school with them- knowledge and interests, cultural, and linguistic resources, teach skills and bridge gaps +

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays from William Ayers, Maxine Green, Herbert Kohl and many other educators and reformers. A read that will cause you to reflect and ask questions about the culture of your school, the well being of your students, and consider your own teaching methods. Many of the examples are geared toward high school classrooms, but certainly with a little creativity can be modified to be just as powerful in elementary/middle school settings.

[Cara Stone]

https://web.utk.edu/~bmehra/LIS590SJ.htm