Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming Our Schools

Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming our Schools offers both a comprehensive censure of the current corporate interest in privatizing public schooling as well as a framework for attaining meaningful education reform based in democracy and the combined will of the public. Using current research and sound philosophical and ethical arguments, Shyman argues for more attention to be paid to teacher expertise, participatory democratic practices, genuine valuation of ethnic and cultural diversity, attention to global citizenship and cooperation, and the prevention of private profit-based interests in public schooling policy and practice. By returning the power of the public school to the public and the true experts, public schools can become the most important tool in securing genuine cultural growth leading to a stronger, safer and more cooperative nation and world.

In this concise and riveting analysis of public schooling, Eric Shyman powerfully makes the case for true education reform. With the level of honesty and clarity of thought desperately needed to address the crisis of American education, Shyman takes the reader through a series of stimulating arguments as he lays out a plan for socially just educational reform. In so doing, he shows us how we might reclaim not only our children, but our democracy. Shyman's handbook for the transformation of education is essential reading for anyone who cares about our children and the schools who shape them., Timely and provocative, this book traces the private takeover of American public schools, a movement that has sacrificed the democratizing potential of public education and exacerbated the academic and social wellbeing of children from marginalized groups. Going beyond critique, Eric Shyman offers an inspiring and comprehensive plan of action that calls for reclaiming public schools by decentralizing control of education, elevating the role of teachers in educational decision-making, promoting culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, and adopting a curriculum that nurtures global citizenship. Reclaiming our children, Reclaiming our Schools is a must-read for parents, teachers, school administrators, teacher educators, and others committed to making schools democratic and just., In unearthing the current myths about educational reform, Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming our Schools offers a realistic alternative vision for change based on an accurate and insightful analysis of the ways that racial and economic oppression shape the situation of urban schools.  Further, it lucidly and passionately reimagines the transformation of schools through actually lived lives of Black and Brown students and the ideas and desires of those who truly care about them.  , In Reclaiming our Children, Reclaiming our Schools Eric Shyman offers a sweeping, critical analysis of the privatization of public education in the United States while providing concrete examples of more democratic, equitable solutions from around the world. Concise and sharply written, Reclaiming our Children is a perfect book for anyone who wants to both understand the regressive politics of neoliberal, corporate education reform and envision something better. 

Eric Shyman is an assistant professor of Child Study at St. Joseph’s College on Long Island, New York. He received his doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University.