Critical Issues in Democratic Schooling

Kenneth Teitelbaum is a former education dean at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He was also a department chair at Kent State University and a faculty member and graduate program coordinator at Binghamton University and Syracuse University. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Given the contentious nature of educational policy and practice, educational professionals as well as informed community people are hungry for persuasive, rational, well-supported insights about the complex educational decisions facing them. This book provides that clarity in a jargon-free manner. What particularly distinguishes it is the multi-disciplinary perspective on a variety of themes, put together in a coherent conceptual framework." Wendy Kohli, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Educational Studies and Teacher Preparation, Fairfield University"This book is a tour de force. It is engaging, thoughtful, and filled with great insights and advice. It is also a pleasure to read, with a blend of scholarly work, career experience, autobiography, concrete examples, and literature that makes it unique as a guide to understanding education. Teitelbaum leads the reader nicely into deeper wisdom about schooling, teaching, learning, democracy, and society."Lawrence C. Stedman, PhD, former professor, School of Education, SUNY-Binghamton"Teitelbaum thoughtfully weaves together insights from his decades of experience as an educator and scholar to address a broad range of issues in education. Readers new to these issues as well as those who are weary of school-bashing and reform agendas, will find in these essays ways to deepen their own critical understandings of—and ways to change—education in a democracy."Linda Valli, PhD, Professor Emerita, Curriculum and Instruction, University of Maryland College Park"[The book is] an illuminating set of reflections about what it means to be a teacher, teacher educator, administrator, and education scholar and what gives meaning to all of these practices. Throughout, Teitelbaum’s voice is engagingly conversational, avoiding the usual academic jargon and pontification in favor of just talking to you as a fellow educator about why we do what we do, how we do it, and why it matters." David Labaree, Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University"[This] is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs. … It’s also a great book that will allow practicing teachers and administrators to question their practices. If you are looking for a book to give all of the teachers in your building for professional development, look no further. … [Reading this] book has been a wonderful experience. Be sure to get a copy."Doug Green, EdD, former elementary school principal in Binghamton, NY, and author of Teaching Isn’t Rocket Science, It’s Way More Complex (2018)

• 1: Teaching Has Its Own Rewards; 2: Despite What Some Think, Teaching Isn’t Easy; 3: Reasons to be A Teacher; 4: "Work with What You’ve Got"; 5: Lessons from Alternative (Progressive) Schooling; 6: Understanding Teacher Education and Teaching; 7: Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Teacher Education; 8: The Work of Education Deans Amidst Recent State Policy Changes; 9: The Nature and Value of Curriculum Theorizing; 10: Curriculum Debates; 11: Critical Civic Literacy in Schools; 12: Curriculum and Socialism in the United States, 1900-1920; 13: Everyone a Writer; 14: What About the Arts?; 15: The Value of Recreation and Play; 16: Multicultural Education: A Rationale; 17: Tensions and Dilemmas in Multicultural Teaching; 18: Context and Black Academic Attainment; 19: Poverty, Children, and Schooling; 20: Class in America: What do Schools Have to do With It?; 21: The "Gaze" of Teachers and Issues of Academic and Communicative Competence;