Teachers who share children's literature with their classes in content areas also provide a rich curriculum in moral and ethical education. Embedded are values that promote democratic living and enhance children's moral education. This article discusses the ethics in fictional and biographical children's literature and offers strategies for…

Explains how Town Hall meetings with high school students and California legislators-- the LegiSchool Project--provided the kinds of experiences that enabled the author to examine three essential conditions of democratic citizenship: student interest, respect, and appreciation. Illuminates what these three conditions consist of and how many…

Delegating decision making to those closest to implementation can result in better decisions, more support for improvement initiatives, and increased student performance. Shared decision making depends on capable school leadership, a professional community, instructional guidance mechanisms, knowledge and skills, information sharing, power, and…

The 21st-century superintendent faces several challenges: changing demographics (growing diversity), the divide between haves and have-nots, devaluation of children (reliance on remediation over prevention), de-emphasis on education for citizenship, deregulation, devolution of power, "demassification" (fewer common information sources),…

Argues that composition has neglected the circulation (delivery) of writing by figuring classroom life as a middle-class family drama. Draws on Marx's "Grundrisse" for a conceptual model of how circulation materializes contradictory social relations and how contradictions between exchange value and use value might be taken up in writing…

Discusses how to bring political issues into the classroom, highlighting the influence of local context and noting conservative and liberal criticisms of political correctness. Suggests the need for a different idea of how to teach politically from the advocacy pedagogy advanced by recent critical educators, explaining that bringing students into…

Examined how precollege experiences predispose students to democratic outcomes: ability to see the world from another perspective, beliefs that conflict enhances democracy, and views about social action's importance. Found that first-year females are more likely than males to report these values, and that race/ethnic or controversial discussions,…

Presents an interview with Alfie Kohn, who has written and spoken widely on human behavior, education, and social theory. Discusses high-stakes testing, democracy, and the politics of literacy. (RS)

Argues for more responsible education accountability system. Builds on earlier work and presents alternative concepts that are more responsive to the purposes and functions of public schooling in a democratic society. Proposes ideas about good teaching and learning and the educational needs of students and their families, particularly in…

Notes the inevitable tensions between the interests of teachers and administrators on the one hand and individual constitutional rights of students on the other. Uses an incident at a Florida high school to discuss 4 basic premises explaining why school administrators must adopt a "preferred position" in support of student…

Introduces a character-education framework to guide principals in designing programs. Critical elements include discussion of values to be fostered, development of a comprehensive vision and purpose, consensus on expectations, adequate resources and training, parent/community partnerships, program and implementation standards, and assessment. (MLH)

Describes the first stage of a 3-year project, the Democratic Education and Exchange Project, sponsored by the Great Lakes Consortium for International Development. An 8-day institute was held in Szeged, Hungary for teams of Hungarian and Ukrainian teachers, who later established Internet connections with American counterparts. The institute…

Introduces several articles on social inclusion written by individuals struggling to accommodate changing professional demands with their own understandings and practices, drawing on the dominant discourses surrounding them, which include old professional understandings of equal opportunities, social justice, race, gender, and class and new…

We live in a global era of transcendent democracy. According to recent surveys by Freedom House, most peoples of the world favor democracy over other types of government. A global revival of education for democratic citizenship accompanies the worldwide resurgence of democracy. Diverse peoples in various parts of the world commonly understand that…

Anchored in insights from my evolving research in Mexico and the United States, this article engages the literature on democratic citizenship education and proposes a potentially unifying research program for the anthropology of education. I urge anthropologists of education to address questions of political order and to bring democracy and…