Offering a novel take on the history of education in the US, A History of Education for the Many examines the development of the education system from a global and internationalist perspective. Challenging the dominant narratives that such development is the product of either a flourishing democracy or a ruling-class project to reproduce structural inequalities, this book demonstrates the link between education and the struggles of working-class and oppressed peoples inside and outside the US. In a country notorious for educating its people with an inability to see beyond its own borders, this book offers a timely corrective by focusing on the primacy of the global balances of forces in shaping the history of US education. Combining Marx’s dialectic with W.E.B. Du Bois’ historiographical approach, Malott demonstrates how the mighty agency of the world’s poor and oppressed have forced the hand of the US ruling class in foreign policy and domestic educational policies. Malott offers a unique view of the dialectical development of social control by examining the role of the police and state violence, along with education or ideology over time. This situates the 2020 uprisings against racism and the movements to defund the police within a historical context dating back to eighteenth-century slave patrols. As US imperialism declines in the 21st century and social movements across the globe continue to swell and intensify, Malott’s historical analysis looks backwards as it pushes us, optimistically and realistically, forwards towards a liberated future. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com.

This year (2012) marks ten years of No Child Left Behind and the U.S. federal government's official designation of what qualifies as "scientifically based research" (SBR) in education. Combined, these two policies have resulted in a narrowing of education via standardization and high stakes testing (Au, 2007) as well as the curtailment of forms of inquiry that are deemed legitimate for examining education (Wright, 2006). While there has been much debate about the benefits and limitations of the NCLB legislation (e.g., Au, 2010) and SBR (e.g., Eisenhart & Towne, 2003), critical researchers have held strong to their position: The reductionistic narrowing of education curricula and educational research cannot solve the present and historical inequities in society and education (Shields, 2012). Contrarily, reductionism (via standardization and/or methodological prescription) exacerbates the challenges we face because it effectively erases the epistemological, ontological, and axiological diversity necessary for disrupting hegemonic social structures that lie at the root of human suffering (Kincheloe, 2004). Not only has NCLB proven incapable of overcoming inequalities, but there seems to be sufficient evidence to suggest it was never really intended to eliminate poverty and human suffering. That is, it seems NCLB, despite its lofty title and public discourse, is actually designed to advance the agenda of handing public education over to for-profit corporations to manage and privatize thereby intensifying the capitalist class' war on those who rely on a wage to survive (Malott, 2010). In the present ethos, reductionism upholds and retrenches the status quo (i.e. the basic structures of power), and it puts at risk education and educational research as means of working toward social justice (Biesta, 2007). Because social justice can be interpreted in multiple ways, we might note that we understand critical social justice as oriented toward action and social change. Thus, critical education and research may have potential to contribute to a number of social justice imperatives, such as: redistributing land from the neo-colonizing settler-state to Indigenous peoples, halting exploitative labor relations and hazardous working conditions for wage-earners, and engaging in reparations with formerly enslaved communities.

Learning with Lenin brings together, for the first time, Lenin's classic texts and his speeches and writings on education. To facilitate educators and activists' engagement with these works, a study and discussion guide accompanies each text. Learning with Lenin contributes to the rematerialization of a revolutionary movement in the U.S. by focusing on the pedagogy of Lenin. After a series of setbacks and attacks that seriously degraded its status in both working-class struggles and educational theory, socialism is once again on the rise. Like the generations before them, organizers, activists, and educators are once again turning to classic works of socialism to understand and respond to the systematic depravities of imperialism, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism. Learning with Lenin will assist anyone interested in reading and applying Lenin's theories to our current era, with all of its complexities and contradictions.

This book presents a novel perspective on neocolonialism, education and other related issues. It unveils the effects of neocolonialism on the learning and well-being of students and workers, including marginalized groups such as Native Americans, Latino/as, and African Americans. It is a collection of in-depth interviews with and heartfelt essays by committed social justice educators and scholars genuinely concerned with educational issues situated in the context of western neocolonialism and neoliberalism.This dialogical way of discussing important issues and co-constructing knowledge can be traced back to ancient philosophers, who used dialogue as a form of inquiry to explore and analyze educational, socio-economic and political issues facing the world. It will cover many interwoven and pressing issues echoed through authentic voices of progressive educators and scholars.

This book presents a novel perspective on neocolonialism, education and other related issues. It unveils the effects of neocolonialism on the learning and well-being of students and workers, including marginalized groups such as Native Americans, Latino/as, and African Americans. It is a collection of in-depth interviews with and heartfelt essays by committed social justice educators and scholars genuinely concerned with educational issues situated in the context of western neocolonialism and neoliberalism.This dialogical way of discussing important issues and co-constructing knowledge can be traced back to ancient philosophers, who used dialogue as a form of inquiry to explore and analyze educational, socio-economic and political issues facing the world. It will cover many interwoven and pressing issues echoed through authentic voices of progressive educators and scholars.

Whereas This Fist Called My Heart, the first Peter McLaren reader (2016), offers a window into the development and reorientation of McLaren's work over time, Tracks to Infinity emphasizes the significance of orientation in his contemporary work. McLaren's earlier work was oriented toward the idea of a contradictory postmodern subjectivity located outside the increasingly fragmented, indeterminate late capitalist society. If the concept of the critical subject or change agent is perceived to be simultaneously located both inside and outside of the world that exists, however mundane, it begins to appear as a utopian or idealist construction. While discourse is indeed important, locating the revolutionary potential exclusively within the abstract realm of language or the sign can lead to a disconnected relationship with the concreteness of everyday struggle. As the fog of the disembodied, postmodern subject began to lift, McLaren reoriented his engagement with and gaze toward the concrete value-creating laborer as the active agent of revolutionary educations' process of becoming-collectively becoming something other than abstract labor. This volume is filled with deep engagements with the concreteness of lived experience juxtaposed next to the bourgeois propaganda of the capitalist class political establishment as manifested in the Trump era.

Whereas This Fist Called My Heart, the first Peter McLaren reader (2016), offers a window into the development and reorientation of McLaren's work over time, Tracks to Infinity emphasizes the significance of orientation in his contemporary work. McLaren's earlier work was oriented toward the idea of a contradictory postmodern subjectivity located outside the increasingly fragmented, indeterminate late capitalist society. If the concept of the critical subject or change agent is perceived to be simultaneously located both inside and outside of the world that exists, however mundane, it begins to appear as a utopian or idealist construction. While discourse is indeed important, locating the revolutionary potential exclusively within the abstract realm of language or the sign can lead to a disconnected relationship with the concreteness of everyday struggle. As the fog of the disembodied, postmodern subject began to lift, McLaren reoriented his engagement with and gaze toward the concrete value-creating laborer as the active agent of revolutionary educations' process of becoming-collectively becoming something other than abstract labor. This volume is filled with deep engagements with the concreteness of lived experience juxtaposed next to the bourgeois propaganda of the capitalist class political establishment as manifested in the Trump era.

Learning with Lenin brings together, for the first time, Lenin's classic texts and his speeches and writings on education. To facilitate educators and activists' engagement with these works, a study and discussion guide accompanies each text. Learning with Lenin contributes to the rematerialization of a revolutionary movement in the U.S. by focusing on the pedagogy of Lenin. After a series of setbacks and attacks that seriously degraded its status in both working-class struggles and educational theory, socialism is once again on the rise. Like the generations before them, organizers, activists, and educators are once again turning to classic works of socialism to understand and respond to the systematic depravities of imperialism, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism. Learning with Lenin will assist anyone interested in reading and applying Lenin's theories to our current era, with all of its complexities and contradictions.

This year (2012) marks ten years of No Child Left Behind and the U.S. federal government's official designation of what qualifies as "scientifically based research" (SBR) in education. Combined, these two policies have resulted in a narrowing of education via standardization and high stakes testing (Au, 2007) as well as the curtailment of forms of inquiry that are deemed legitimate for examining education (Wright, 2006). While there has been much debate about the benefits and limitations of the NCLB legislation (e.g., Au, 2010) and SBR (e.g., Eisenhart & Towne, 2003), critical researchers have held strong to their position: The reductionistic narrowing of education curricula and educational research cannot solve the present and historical inequities in society and education (Shields, 2012). Contrarily, reductionism (via standardization and/or methodological prescription) exacerbates the challenges we face because it effectively erases the epistemological, ontological, and axiological diversity necessary for disrupting hegemonic social structures that lie at the root of human suffering (Kincheloe, 2004). Not only has NCLB proven incapable of overcoming inequalities, but there seems to be sufficient evidence to suggest it was never really intended to eliminate poverty and human suffering. That is, it seems NCLB, despite its lofty title and public discourse, is actually designed to advance the agenda of handing public education over to for-profit corporations to manage and privatize thereby intensifying the capitalist class' war on those who rely on a wage to survive (Malott, 2010). In the present ethos, reductionism upholds and retrenches the status quo (i.e. the basic structures of power), and it puts at risk education and educational research as means of working toward social justice (Biesta, 2007). Because social justice can be interpreted in multiple ways, we might note that we understand critical social justice as oriented toward action and social change. Thus, critical education and research may have potential to contribute to a number of social justice imperatives, such as: redistributing land from the neo-colonizing settler-state to Indigenous peoples, halting exploitative labor relations and hazardous working conditions for wage-earners, and engaging in reparations with formerly enslaved communities.

Offering a novel take on the history of education in the US, A History of Education for the Many examines the development of the education system from a global and internationalist perspective. Challenging the dominant narratives that such development is the product of either a flourishing democracy or a ruling-class project to reproduce structural inequalities, this book demonstrates the link between education and the struggles of working-class and oppressed peoples inside and outside the US. In a country notorious for educating its people with an inability to see beyond its own borders, this book offers a timely corrective by focusing on the primacy of the global balances of forces in shaping the history of US education. Combining Marx's dialectic with W.E.B. Du Bois' historiographical approach, Malott demonstrates how the mighty agency of the world's poor and oppressed have forced the hand of the US ruling class in foreign policy and domestic educational policies. Malott offers a unique view of the dialectical development of social control by examining the role of the police and state violence, along with education or ideology over time. This situates the 2020 uprisings against racism and the movements to defund the police within a historical context dating back to eighteenth-century slave patrols. As US imperialism declines in the 21st century and social movements across the globe continue to swell and intensify, Malott's historical analysis looks backwards as it pushes us, optimistically and realistically, forwards towards a liberated future. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com.