With emphasis on preparing students for jobs, standards, and achievement testing, many think that North American education has become inwardly deadening, yet this book provides a counterbalance as it offers a way to nurture the soul in classrooms and schools.

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.

Interviews with African American women in prison.

The story of life in inner-city America and the education of its people is often recounted as a tragedy; the ending is often predictable and usually dire, highlighting deficiency, failure, and negative trends. As with most social problems, children and youth in the inner cities are hit hardest. But this dismal view is only half of the full picture. The cities of our nation are a startling juxtaposition between the despairing and the hopeful, between disorganization and restorative potential. Alongside the poverty and unemployment, the street-fights and drug deals, are a wealth of cultural, economic, educational, and social resources. Often ignored are the resilience and the ability for adaptation which help many who are seemingly confined by circumstance to struggle and succeed "in the face of the odds." This book helps to broaden the utilization of ways to magnify the circumstances known to enhance development and education, so that the burden of adversity is reduced and opportunities are advanced for all children and youth -- especially the children and youth of the inner cities who are in at-risk circumstances. The focus is on: * raising consciousness about the opportunities available to foster resilience among children, families, and communities, and * synthesizing the knowledge base that is central to implementing improvements which serve to better the circumstances and educational opportunities of children and families. This volume is intended for a wide audience of readers, but particularly those who are in a position to shape public policy and deliver educational and human services.

The birth of the modern world as told through the remarkable story of one eighteenth-century family They were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing eighteenth century. Piecing together their voyages, marriages, debts, and lawsuits, and examining their ideas, sentiments, and values, renowned historian Emma Rothschild illuminates a tumultuous period that created the modern economy, the British Empire, and the philosophical Enlightenment. One of the sisters joined a rebel army, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and escaped in disguise in 1746. Her younger brother was a close friend of Adam Smith and David Hume. Another brother was fluent in Persian and Bengali, and married to a celebrated poet. He was the owner of a slave known only as "Bell or Belinda," who journeyed from Calcutta to Virginia, was accused in Scotland of infanticide, and was the last person judged to be a slave by a court in the British isles. In Grenada, India, Jamaica, and Florida, the Johnstones embodied the connections between European, American, and Asian empires. Their family history offers insights into a time when distinctions between the public and private, home and overseas, and slavery and servitude were in constant flux. Based on multiple archives, documents, and letters, The Inner Life of Empires looks at one family's complex story to describe the origins of the modern political, economic, and intellectual world.