Visions of Schooling: Conscience, Community, and Common Education - Hardcover

Salomone, Professor Rosemary C.; Salomone, Rosemary C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300081197 ISBN 13: 9780300081190

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2000

Synopsis

This book grows out of Salomone's study of a real case of continuing conflict over values in the Bedford, New York school district. The controversy began in 1995 as a disagreement over an extracurricular card game and soon escalated into a constitutional battle sweeping across the curriculum. She shows the reader that Bedford offers valuable lessons about parental discretion, school governance, tolerance, the political purposes of schooling, and the limits of constitutionalism. She uses as her main focus the claims made by religious conservatives whose unswerving faith an unwillingness to compromise their values present the starkest of backdrops against which to explore the concept of education for democratic citizenship in a society that values both freedom of conscience and civic commitment. She concludes that "controlled choice" is needed in American education.

About this title

About the Author

Rosemary C. Salomone is Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law where she has served as Associate Dean, Director of the Center for Law and Public Policy, and the Harold McNiece Professor of Law. She currently teaches constitutional, administrative, and local government law. Prior to joining the St. John's faculty, she was an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she taught education law, school finance, and language planning and policy in the Administration, Planning, and Social Policy Program and served on the faculty of the Institute for Educational Management. From 1985 to 1995, she was a trustee of the State University of New York where she chaired the Academic Planning Committee. She also has chaired the Education and the Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Section on Education Law of the Association of American Law Schools. In addition to VISIONS OF SCHOOLING: CONSCIENCE, COMMUNITY, AND COMMON EDUCATION (Yale University Press, 2000)and EQUAL EDUCATION UNDER LAW (St. Martin's Press, 1986), her publications include numerous articles, book chapters, and commentaries on constitutional law, educational governance, gender equity, free speech, freedom of religion, and government regulation. Her research has been supported by the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) where she is currently an independent project fellow, the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Milton and Mark DeWolfe Howe Funds of Harvard University. She holds a Ph.D. and an LL.M. from Columbia University where she was the Bretzfelder Fellow in Constitutional Law during the 1983-84 academic year. She is currently writing a book on gender, race, and single-sex education that will be published by Yale University Press.

From the Inside Flap

"Rosemary Salomone has written an extremely helpful book on the value conflicts that have marked and increasingly characteize American public education. Clearly some common visions and assumptions that brought together parents, children, and students are no longer operative. This book is an excellent guide to the conflicts we cannot avoid in the process of education." Nathan Glazer, Harvard University

"Salomone, fully appreciating the dangers posed by the statists on the one hand and the radical individualists on the other, makes her own proposal a model of fairness and balance." John F. Coons, University of California at Berkeley School of Law

"How do we ensure common values in a pluralist society -- and how do we protect individual freedom and self-determination in activities that the state controls? Rosemary Salomone gives sober and thorough guidance on these issues in the crucial context of schooling. Her treatments of school choice, children's needs, parental rights, and intergroup conflict are remarkably fair, clear, and useful. This book should be read by parents and political leaders as well as scholars and students." Martha Minow, Harvard Law School

"A consummate account, historical and contemporary, of the surging legal and political school wars that pit family autonomy and religious conscience against civic and communal demands -- together with the author's creative proposal for peace." John G. Simon, Yale Law School

Reviews

How much control should parents have over their children's education? What should the balance be between parental and governmental control in education? And where do the children and their rights fit in? Salomone (law, St. John's Univ.) examines how children have been perceived through history (as "miniature adults" in the Middle Ages and as the legal property of their parents after the Reformation) before they were eventually seen as individuals with their own rights. She also explains how our current education system is rooted in 19th-century ideals, stating that it is clearly time for a change. "Can't we all just get along," seems to be Salomone's plea as she tackles the issue of mixing the needs and wants of children, parents, and educators. While she offers no specific solutions, her comments could cause concerned citizens to "think outside the box" and to begin a process that could create a more harmonious environment in public schools. Primarily for academic and larger public libraries.DTerry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300081197
• ISBN 13: 9780300081190
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352