Educating for Hope and Possibility in Troubled Times

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THERE IS MUCH TALK TODAY in the United States about a crisis of education. Yet what is pointed to as the cause of this crisis is confusing at best, and misleading at worst. There is, for example, the argument made by some commentators that our economy is in trouble because of poor education. Of course this seems preposterous when compared to the role of the banks in our most recent economic crisis. Despite talk of demands for sophisticated skills and more educated workers, predictions are for an economy that will continue to employ high numbers of low and semi-skilled workers; jobs that used to be done by high school graduates are now increasingly filled by those with college degrees.

2012

Educating for Wisdom

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What Wilhelm and Novak have to say represents a light in dark times. They have written a book that is at once a sophisticated philosophical treatise on education and a radical guide for those who teach kids in the classroom.

Articles

Educating for Peace

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Overcoming violence is one of the great intellectual, moral, and spiritual challenges we face as a human community — yet U.S. schools rarely see peace-building as their goal. It’s time for us to rethink our understanding of the purpose of education.

2011

Tikkun Olam and the Work of Education

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For those of us who have, for many years, understood and struggled for tikkun olam, this question of meaning is the real and defining focus of the crisis of education. It calls into question the misguided concern for standardized testing, with its emphasis on uniformity, competition, and invidious comparison as the criteria of “effective learning.”