During the last quarter of a century, public higher education institutions have found themselves buffeted by a perfect storm. This storm has led to discussions about the privatization of those institutions, which has implications for their ability to improve, or at least maintain, their quality and their accessibility to students from all…

School choice is often identified with right-leaning, voucher-happy, market-oriented public school systems like those found in the United States. Thus the proposition that a social democratic state such as South Africa will offer many primary and secondary school learners far greater choice strikes many as counter-intuitive and implausible. The…

This article addresses Spanish for native speakers (SNS) instruction from the perspective of critical pedagogy, including the critical examination of dominant educational paradigms as well as the proposal of alternative models. Emphasizing the inherently political nature of education and the role of language in the production of knowledge,…

Naming a building after a person further implies that the person honored possesses the appropriate qualities necessary to be recognized in such a permanent fashion, and that the individual was, in some respects, the embodiment of the community's shared values. Here, Moran analyzes the naming of public school buildings in Kansas City MO between the…

Recent reform initiatives, especially the No Child Left Behind Act, tend to rely on a variety of highly debatable assumptions that fail to reflect the diversity of today's classrooms and also place pressure on educators in a manner we characterize as accountability by assumption. Such reform initiatives have become so political, complex, and…

Issues relating to the organization of the process of education via the network system is being discussed vigorously among specialists in the field of social economic theory and economic sociology. An example of network education is seen in the network of affiliates and branch offices of institutions of higher learning. This journal has already…

Politicians have been fascinated with choice and diversity in schooling provision for more than a decade now and this intense interest shows no sign of abating. In this article, the author suggests that the precise connection between choice and diversity in schooling provision is very little understood, and that the relationship between them…

Often, the word activism conjures up the image of what the media and others call "radicals," such as inflamed Mexican American college students, for example, who are passionate and emotional, demanding an immediate end to racism on their college campus. Some castigate activist participants as immature and unsophisticated, whereas others…

In this article, the author discusses the contradictory goals of several groups and individuals that are waging war against social studies and the historians' attitudes in response to this war. He stresses that he is not claiming that these "strange bedfellows," as he comes to call them, that are attacking social studies are working in…

This article examines race-based propositions and the movidas used to garner electorate support for these initiatives, which amount to the "tyranny of the majority" trampling on the rights of the minority as has happened so many times during our nation's history in the name of democracy. Specifically, the passage of Proposition 227 in California…

Character education's history in the United States goes back to the beginning of public schools. The emphasis and profile has waxed and waned, frequently with political trends. The current standards-based environment poses particular threats and challenges to character education. In spite of these pressures, character education continues and - by…

This paper provides an analysis of recent educational reforms in Hong Kong that aim to transform the ideological basis of the curriculum, teaching and learning. While the reforms appear compatible with current international developments in higher education and school curriculum--movements, for example, towards standards-based accountability, the…

This article uses data from a series of reports by the Longer Term Strategy Group of Universities UK to outline key features of the developing market for higher education in the UK. The resulting empirical lessons about the behaviour of students and institutions are tested against the political drive for a freer domestic "market" for…

This paper explores some of the more disturbing aspects of research on what was, at the time, the only state-funded alternative secondary school in New Zealand. Throughout the five years of research, New Zealand's school inspectorate, the Education Review Office, publicly released a series of highly critical reports on the school which resulted in…

This paper intents to analyze the influence of John Dewey's ideas in the movement that defended the educational renovation in Brazil (named New School) at the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s. For this, it explains two trends of that movement: the first is described by the metaphor of industrial or mechanical efficiency, whose emphasis was in the…