Equality, Education, and Human Rights in the United States

Mike Cole is a writer and Emeritus Research Professor in Education and Equality at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK. His latest books are Education, Equality, and Human Rights: Issues of Gender, ‘Race’, Sexuality, Disability and Social Class, Fifth Edition; and Racism and the Tory Party: From Disraeli to Johnson (2023).

It is appropriate that Peter McLaren introduces this volume in his inimitably plaintive and frenetic fashion. Mike Cole’s new collection does not slow down from there. The chapters provide hard-hitting presentations of a given social injustice, each combining historical depth with conceptual heft. This volume is a necessary reminder of not just where we have been but also of where we are headed. Despite the assault on schools from myriad ideological sources -- neoliberalism, neoconservativism, neofascism, neonazism, white supremacy -- and the growing number of policy makers who embrace them, it is here that the authors in this volume, as critical pedagogues and resistance theorists, continue to seek hope.– John E Petrovic, The University of Alabama, author of Unschooling Critical Pedagogy, Unfixing Schools. Finding ourselves at a critical historical juncture with respect to questions of equality and human rights in education, this timely volume offers readers a powerful compilation of thought-provoking essays that speak to the very root of inequalities and offers valuable alternatives for genuinely enacting educational political projects that are in sync with our revolutionary dreams. – Antonia Darder, Professor Emerita, Loyola Marymount University, USAMike Cole has edited an outstanding collection of essays from internationally known scholars who analyze the current political threats to democracy particularly from the right-wing. The issues of gender, disabilities, sexuality, ecology, class and others are clearly articulated within a political context. The essays boldly confront the significant dilemmas and conflicts that all of us face. The book is an indispensable and excellent read for all scholars and educators committed to social justice and equity in these nightmarish times. It is a must read.– William M. Reynolds, Georgia Southern University, USAThis is an astonishing book! So strong yet subtle, so well written in easy-to-understand language clarifying sometimes complex concepts and analysis- and, overtly written by various chapter writers from the heart, from feeling, from cool outrage at the tragic inequalities within the USA and its education systems.This is a brilliant and moving and clearly Marxist critique that goes beyond critique, into resistance and `what we can do’. I am so full of admiration for this book- I wish all USA teachers in schools, community colleges and universities would read it. That would set the Marxist cat among the Capitalist pigeons!– Dave Hill, Emeritus Research Professor of Education, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

• Foreword: Democracy Under Siege and the Rise of the Unthinkable; Introduction: Equality and Human Rights in the United States today1. Feminism and Socialism: Looking Back, Looking Ahead; 2. Gender and Education: The Revolutionary ‘Force and Reason’ of Women; 3. U. S. History Breathes and Bleeds Racism; 4. Racism and Education: Failure to Achieve Democratic Aims Inclusively in Public Schooling; 5. The Making of Sexuality in the United States: Normativity, Heteropatriarchy, and Resisting the ‘Euphoria’ of Androcentric Logic; 6. Toward a Marxian Understanding of Sex Education Policy and Curriculum in the United States; 7. Disability Matters: A Materialist History of Disability Under U.S. Settler-Capitalism; 8. Disabling Learning Conditions: Ability-Segregated Education and the Creation of Disability; 9. Marx and the Marxist alternative to neoliberal capitalism: the case for a fully inclusive ecosocialism for today; 10. The Hidden Cost of Class Disavowal and the Case for a New Education System: Social Class and Education in the U.S.