Routledge Against Schooling: For an Education That Matters (Radical Imagination Series)

Product Description In Against Schooling, Stanley Aronowitz passionately raises an alarm about the current state of education in our country. Discipline and control over students, Aronowitz argues, are now the primary criteria of success, and genuine learning is sacrificed to a new educational militarism. In an age where school districts have imposed testing, teachers must teach to test, and both teacher and student are robbed of their autonomy and creativity. The crisis extends to higher education, where all but a few elite institutions are becoming increasingly narrowly focused and vocational in their teaching. With education lacking opportunity for self-reflection on broad social and historical dynamics, Against Schooling asks "How will society be able to solve its most pressing problems?" Aronowitz proposes innovative approaches to get schools back on track. Review To say that Stanley Aronowitz is a national treasure is an understatement. Against Schooling is vintage Aronowitz. Against Schooling makes a brilliant and impassioned argument for the necessity of creating new knowledges and social and cultural practices that do not repeat the privileging hierarchies of previous generations but enable individuals to become global as well as national citizens who refuse to accept the current regime of educational degradation. Aronowitz's call for a protagonistic effort to bring teachers in higher education together with elementary and secondary school faculty in a common fight is one that we must take seriously if we want to save not only our schools but the very fabric of our social universe. -- Peter McLaren, UCLA About the Author Stanley Aronowitz is Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author most recently of The Knowledge Factory (Beacon 2000) and How Class Works (Yale University Press 2003). The Green Party candidate for New York governor in 2002, he has also been a contributor to The Nation, The Village Voice, and New Politics.