Book Review

The Books' Topics:

• A Confrontive "Tell it like it is" History Curriculum


• The Battle for Control of our Schools Moral Curriculum by Liberals and Conservatives


• The Evolution of the Moral Dialog in America's Schools

The central themes of this book are:

• Values are a component of democratic thinking


• Our track record on bringing values to light is dim


• Divergent visions can coexist in conflict


• Students have greater maturity in integrating complex values than many of their elders

Keywords:

• Critical Moral Education


• Multicultural assumptions


• Racial assumptions and attitudes


• Political machinations


• Political Right (as in direction, not correctness)

Main Idea:

• Democratic thought requires full exposure to divergent values


• Submerged issues such as race, sex, politics and religion batter our schools


• Courage and freedom to communicate bring undercurrents of thought, belief and cloaked action to light.

Quotes:

"While both moral and character education programs have existed in some form or other since the early days of common schooling, multicultual, antiracist, and conflict resolution programs are a more recent phenomena, the products of both the opportunities and tensions bor of America's changing demographics and other social, cultural, and political trends. Multicultural curricula seek to sensitize students to the fact of cultural diversity by teaching about the histories and cultures of different ethnic groups. Antiracist curricula take the additional step of investigating the history of unequal power relationships among these groups. They seek to sharpen students' awarened of prejudice and bigotry and strengthen their resolve to act against them. Programs in conflict resolution and violence prevention help students find ways to resolve conflicts peacefully, without resorting to verbal or physical violence."(p. - 7)

"Instilling positive moral values in schoolchildren [sic] sounds good; raising engaged, socially responsible future citizens sounds even better. But these seemingly straightforward goals raise complex qauestons: What values are to be deemed positive? By whose authority are they promoted? How should they be taught in schools? What is their relation to the schools' many other functions and responsibilities? "(p. -

"I believe that arguing that schools should stick soley to the 'basics' is in fact a dodge. Conservative and New Right critics are not really agaist schools imparting moral and political valeus to students; they are simply against imparting values they consider 'wrong.' Their oppositon to fostering critical moral thinking stemsp from their desire to imparat their own values to young people--values they implicitly or explicitly claim are authentic, unchanging, and truly'American.""(p. - 9)

"The curriculum must provide opportunities for students to explore the practical applications of freedom, which they have learned demand constant struggle with difficult, controversial, and complex issues. The responsibility that citizens have for one another as neighbors and as nations cannot be lefto to others. "(p. - 70)

"From my perspective, these classrom dynamics reveal tensions about conflicting values and ideologies among teachers, students and teh Facing History curriculum itself, demonstrating the enourmous complexity of the endeavor to catalyze critical, moral tinking among adolescent students."(p. - 70 & 71 )

"These issues were fought out in teh realm of education is not surprising, and that they took shape in conflicts over a particular curriculum is not without precedent. Over the years, numerous attempts have been made to recon with the place of social and moral values in the classroom. Whether approached as an explicit subjet of the curriculum or embedded in the everyday dealinggs of students and teachers, American schools have long sought to nuture students' ability to know right from wrong, to care about their classmates and caretakers and to treat them with respect, in short to engage with the world by seeing themselves as responsible citizens, members of teh human community. These teachings have always been hotly contested, for liberals and conservatives have often been in conflict over the place moral education should occupy within the school curriculum, which values schools should teach, and how they should do so."(p. - 102)

"Opponent of this kind of moral education in the classroom are by no means against responsible citizenship, and many would object to a charactreizaton that pits them against the ideal of cultural tolerance and arespect. They are a diverse group, and their reasons for opposing such curricula are consequently varied. Generally speaking, however, critics argue tht moral values are by and large a private affair outside the purview of government. They feel that the responsibility of promoting moral growth lies with the home of the church, not the school. Moreover, they fear that the values promoted within the classroom may at times conflict with those encouraged in the home. Equally invested in advancing a particular understanding of American democracy, they contest the so-called liberal bias of these educational programs and charge that they undermine, rather than further, democratic aims. Fearing the construction of values promoted by liberals within the schools, critics argue against shared responsibility for moral growtn. The urge schools to stick to a more limited intellectual terrain instead--for example, the old "basics" of reading, writing and arithmetic. (p. - 103 & 104)

Issues Addressed by the Book:

This book grapples with the issue of values as these attitudes, habits and beliefs are played out in the culture, religion and politics that impact students, often on a hidden way.

The book also conveys a "liberal" bias that weaves a particular spin and slant on history, classroom observation and the emotional impact of the book.

The Book's Shortcomings:

The author tries to be too academic and even handed, and in doing so, weakens the book's documentary value.

The author spends lots of time relating intricate observations of students who grapple with these issues, but this style makes scanning for summaries and outlining the book's content cumbersome. It takes detective work to find out what side the author really is on.

Comments:

This book would benefit from an action oriented, easier to read format.

The long narrative passages would be easier to read if outline elements were identified with subheadings and formatting.

A newspaper, rather than literary style, would help busy teachers skim and scan the passages to find relevant passages (and possibly ignore the rest of the endless details).

Summary:

This is an important topic, and the examples are a bit dated. A conversation about this topic becomes really skewed when the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is seen as a thinly veiled attempt (by some forces) to promote voucher-based funding for religious schools.

Observing and describing student interactions (and confrontations) in exquisite detail, and cataloging the values-in-schools history falls short of providing the action-oriented, easy to read (i.e., scan) and easy to apply materials that busy teachers need. Busy teachers do not have the luxury of sifting through mountains of prose to mine gems of wisdom, no matte how eloquent and insightful.

Rating (Four Point scale):