Event
Tuesday, May 2
12:00 to 2:00 PM
PennGSE, Room 203
3700 Walnut
THE CASE FOR CONTENTION: TEACHING CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS, University of Chicago Press.
Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson.
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo25956793.html
Professor of History of Education in the Education, Culture, and Society Program at PennGSE, Dr. Jon Zimmerman has authored books about sex and alcohol education, history and religion in the curriculum, Americans who taught overseas, and historical memory in public schooling. The Case for Contention, with Dr. Emily Robertson, challenges us to consider why American schools are terrible at having informed, reasonable debates, and suggests how we may fix them. Armed with a history of the development of American educational policy and a clear philosophical analysis of the value of contention in public discourse, they show that one of the best things schools should do is face controversial topics dead on in the classroom.
SELLING HOPE AND COLLEGE: MERIT, MARKETS, AND RECRUITMENT IN AN UNRANKED SCHOOL, Cornell University Press.
Alex Posecznick
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100703310
An anthropologist by training, Dr. Alex Posecznick manages the master’s and doctoral programs in Education, Culture, and Society, and the master’s program in International Education Development at PennGSE, where he also serves as a member of the Associated Faculty. Selling Hope and College, Posecznick’s first book, is an ethnography of admissions at a less-selective college. In it, he considers both our culture of meritocracy, and what it takes to keep an unranked school open and running, and the struggles that members of the community tangle with daily as they walk a careful line—the line between empowering marginalized students and exploiting them.