Teaching Toward Democracy

"Teaching Toward Democracy" examines the contested space of schooling and school reform with a focus on the unique challenges and opportunities that teaching in a democratic society provides. Teaching in and for democracy involves developing particular qualities of mind that teachers explore and work to develop as they become more effective educators. Some chapters open with familiar experiences in the lives of teachers in schools (working with parents and communities, or dealing with classroom discipline and management) and illuminate that commonplace in new, helpful, and sometimes startling, ways. Other chapters present possible interventions any teacher might make in any classroom for example, using the arts as an organizing center and metaphor for teaching more generally, or rethinking the press of politics on our every day practice. This book foregrounds the central idea that democratic ideals are a necessary starting point and context in which to enact our teaching here and now."

William Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His recent publications include Race Course Against White Supremacy (with Bernadine Dohrn) and the Handbook of Social Justice in Education (with Therese Quinn and David Stovall). Kevin K. Kumashiro is Professor and Chair of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the founding director of the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education. His recent books include The Seduction of Common Sense: How the Right Has Framed the Debate on America’s Schools and Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice. Erica R. Meiners is Professor of Education and Women’s Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. She is the author of Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies, and with Therese Quinn, Flaunting It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice, and “Never Innocent: Feminist Trouble with Sex Offender Registries and Protection in a Prison Nation,” in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Therese Quinn is Associate Professor of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her recent publications include Flaunting It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice and the Hand book of Social Justice in Education. David Stovall is Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is author of numerous scholarly and popular articles, poems, polemics, and reviews, and an editor of the Handbook of Social Justice in Education.