| This volume, like the editions that preceded it, is predicated on the following assumption: Educators must see their work as inextricably linked to conflicts, stresses, and crises of the social world—whether these appear in forms that might be cultural, moral, political, economic, ecological, or spiritual. It is impossible to make sense of what is happening educationally if what is occurring is not placed in the context of the strains, struggles, and contradictions in both our national and global communities. Issues such as the growing administrative control over teachers' lives, allegations about the mediocrity of American schools, the crisis of funding, concern about what is called educational excellence, the impoverishment of increasing numbers of children and adolescents, the influence of the media on young lives, fears about moral degeneration, school violence, bitter contention over the nature of the curriculum and of school knowledge, and widening disparities in educational achievement among ethnic and racial groups all must be seen, at the same time, as both critical issues in American education and as metaphors for the larger human and societal situation. It is this connection that is central to the selection of articles in this book. What happens in school, or as part of the educational experience, reflects, expresses, and mediates profound questions about the direction and nature of the society we inhabit.
In this volume, our goal is to provide a focus for thinking about education in the context of a society that now, in this first decade of a new millennium, is faced with a range of critical, sometimes catastrophic, issues and problems, such as poverty and growing social injustice; AIDS; racism, sexism, and homophobic forms of exclusion; depersonalization of social and political life; the moral and spiritual consequences of the commercialization of culture; an unaccountable global economy; and the ecological deterioration of the planet. Our concern is not only for American society, but also for the larger global community.
It is important to add here that we have come to appreciate the debilitating and demoralizing effects on students of critical analyses that only criticize. Empowering human beings for the purpose of social change requires, we believe, not merely brilliantly insightful criticism, but also the vision of alternatives that can be positively embraced and ultimately worked for. Such description helps us to re-image the future and make, in Maxine Greene's words, "the strange familiar." Thus, on a second level, our goal in this volume is to encourage not only a critical examination of our present social reality, but also a serious discussion of alternatives—of what a transformed society and educational process might look like—through what Henry Giroux called a "language of possibility." This volume provides elements of what might be termed a new paradigm for conceiving of our social, cultural, economic, political, and moral worlds, as well as how we think of education. |
