For all of its promise, public education in the twentieth century never lived up to its democratic potential. This book takes a serious look at the slow erosion of the fuller democratic meaning of a public education and a public life.

Introduction, Dennis Carlson and Greg Dimitriadis Part I. Education and the New Cultural Terrain 1. The Globalization of Capitalism and the New Imperialism: Notes toward a Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy, Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur 2. Civil Society and Educational Publics: Possibilities and Problems, Kathleen Knight Abowitz 3. Extraordinary Conversations in Public Schools, Lois Weis and Michelle Fine 4. A Talk to Teachers: James Baldwin as Postcolonial Artist and Public Intellectual, Greg Dimitriadis and Cameron McCarthy 5. Promises to Keep, Finally? Academic Culture and the Dismissal of Popular Culture, John A. Weaver and Toby Daspit Part II. Reimagining Curriculum and Pedagogical Practice 6. Stan Douglas and the Aesthetic Critique of Urban Decline, Warren Crichlow 7. Screening Race, Norman Denzin 8. Troubling Heroes: Of Rosa Parks, Multicultural Education, and Critical Pedagogy, Dennis Carlson 9. The Symbolic Curriculum: Reading the Confederate Flag as a Southern Heritage Text, Susan L. Schramm-Pate and Dennis Carlson 10. Urban Education, Broadcast News, and Multicultural Spectatorship, Suellyn M. Henke 11. They Need Someone to Show Them Discipline: Preservice Teachers' Understandings and Expectations of Student (Re)presentations in Dangerous Minds , Deb Freedman Afterward: Schooling in Capitalist America: Theater of the Oppressor or the Oppressed? Carlos Alberto Torres

"From Plato to popular culture and police brutality, from James Baldwin, Rosa Parks, and the Black Arts Movement to the Confederate Flag in an era of globalization, from effacement to conversation across difference, this collection represents an intellectual breakthrough in the fields of curriculum and cultural studies." -- William F. Pinar, St. Bernard Parish Alumni Endowed Professor, Louisiana State University"Eleven papers, some previously published, critique neoconservative and neoliberal educational reforms, and present a vision for keeping the promise of public education through the construction of a new set of social relationships that are built on collaboration, solidarity, social justice, and equity for all." -- Journal of Economic Literature