Richard A. Couto – författare

The best way to teach democracy has been the subject of an ongoing debate for 2,500 years. Unlike most books about teaching democracy, this one spends more time on how to teach democracy than the what and why of teaching democracy. It punctures the irony of teaching democracy by lectures and superior teachers. In its place, this book provides a variety of illustrations for the teaching of democracy in an experiential and egalitarian fashion. The introduction presents a theoretical and analytical framework of democracy and democratic pedagogy. The six chapters cover topics such as structuring a democratic classroom; democratic practices that empower students; problem solving and community service that make the classroom a laboratory for democracy; and university-based programs of democratic alternatives that serve the community. The volume's treatment of community organization, students as collaborators, personal empowerment, the community of need and response, and the democratic organization expresses its preference for direct democratic participation.

The best way to teach democracy has been the subject of an ongoing debate for 2,500 years. Unlike most books about teaching democracy, this one spends more time on how to teach democracy than the what and why of teaching democracy. It punctures the irony of teaching democracy by lectures and superior teachers. In its place, this book provides a variety of illustrations for the teaching of democracy in an experiential and egalitarian fashion. The introduction presents a theoretical and analytical framework of democracy and democratic pedagogy. The six chapters cover topics such as structuring a democratic classroom; democratic practices that empower students; problem solving and community service that make the classroom a laboratory for democracy; and university-based programs of democratic alternatives that serve the community. The volume's treatment of community organization, students as collaborators, personal empowerment, the community of need and response, and the democratic organization expresses its preference for direct democratic participation.

In Reflections on Leadership fifteen prominent leadership scholars pay tribute to James MacGregor Burns's book, Leadership, a classic in the field of leadership studies. The contributors address the puzzles and anomalies in his work, such as: the place of values in leadership; leadership as a casual factor in change; levels of analysis; interdisciplinary approaches to the study of leadership; the distance of his theory from everyday experience; the absence of gender and race, and more.

The decade of the 1980s marked a triumph for market capitalism. As politicians of all stripes sought to reinvent government in the image of private enterprise, they looked to the voluntary sector for allies to assuage the human costs of reductions in public policies of social welfare. This book details the ""savage side"" of market capitalism in Appalachia and explains the social, political, and economic roles that mediating structures play in mitigating it. Profiling the work of twenty-three such mediating structures--community-based organizations that battled to provide social safety nets, fight environmental assaults, and upgrade the education and job skills of Appalachian residents--Richard Couto distills the practical lessons to be found in their successes and shortcomings. Couto argues that a broader set of democratic dimensions be used in taking the measure of civil society and public policy in the twenty-first century. He shows that mediating structures promote the democratic prospect of reduced inequality and increased communal bonds when they provide and advocate for new forms and increased amounts of social capital--the public goods and moral resources that we invest in one another as members of a community. |Examines the theoretical relationship between community-based organizations that link individuals and government and assesses how this relationship has played out in American public policy on education and health care.

Democracy needs the extraordinary efforts of ordinary people. The experiences of the twelve creative community health leaders, which this book presents, provide excellent examples of innovative democratic leadership. Selected from recipients of awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program, the leaders range from Lorelei DeCora, who works to control the diabetes epidemic among Native Americans, to Judy Panko Reis, an advocate for accessible health care for women with disabilities, to Ron Brown, who helps recovering addicts at Odyssey House in Flint, Michigan. These activists work with people - Native Americans, migrant workers, Central American refugees, disabled persons, inner-city residents, and the rural poor - who have too little of the social goods, such as education, housing, and health care, that others take for granted. Their action conveys the conviction that the fullest form of democracy calls each of us to leadership for improved forms of community, including a health care system for all. Not only is this book rich in issues of health care delivery, political economy, and social justice, but it also contains much about the strategies of community organizing and program development. Health professionals in all institutional settings will find that the stories get to the heart of why they entered and remain in a ""helping"" profession, community organizers will find practical political lessons, and all readers will find a higher standard for democratic practice. To Give Their Gifts recaptures the neglected narratives of democracy. It places community and mutual responsibility for one another at the center of democratic leadership, explains health care as social justice, and asserts the belief that everyone has the ""gifts"" - and the right - to contribute to community.

Democracy needs the extraordinary efforts of ordinary people. The experiences of the twelve creative community health leaders, which this book presents, provide excellent examples of innovative democratic leadership. Selected from recipients of awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program, the leaders range from Lorelei DeCora, who works to control the diabetes epidemic among Native Americans, to Judy Panko Reis, an advocate for accessible health care for women with disabilities, to Ron Brown, who helps recovering addicts at Odyssey House in Flint, Michigan. These activists work with people - Native Americans, migrant workers, Central American refugees, disabled persons, inner-city residents, and the rural poor - who have too little of the social goods, such as education, housing, and health care, that others take for granted. Their action conveys the conviction that the fullest form of democracy calls each of us to leadership for improved forms of community, including a health care system for all. Not only is this book rich in issues of health care delivery, political economy, and social justice, but it also contains much about the strategies of community organizing and program development. Health professionals in all institutional settings will find that the stories get to the heart of why they entered and remain in a ""helping"" profession, community organizers will find practical political lessons, and all readers will find a higher standard for democratic practice. To Give Their Gifts recaptures the neglected narratives of democracy. It places community and mutual responsibility for one another at the center of democratic leadership, explains health care as social justice, and asserts the belief that everyone has the ""gifts"" - and the right - to contribute to community.