Publication Date: February 12, 2016
Pages: 192
For many students in urban public schools, the routines of standards-based instruction and frequent testing remove the possibilities for sustained inquiry and critical engagement in school and with the larger world. Restoring Dignity in Public Schools demonstrates how urban public schools can create thriving, authentic centers of learning. Drawing from rich narratives of human rights education (HRE) in action, the author shows how school leaders can create an environment in which a culture of dignity, respect, tolerance, and democracy flourishes. The book examines the dynamics of HRE in practice, defines its constituent elements, and explains how these components work in tandem to produce schooling that encourages young people to critically interact with the world around them and imagine different alternatives for the future. This timely book provides a viable alternative to the currently favored strategies of increased testing, privatization, and disciplinary control.
Book Features:
Maria Hantzopoulos is associate professor of education at Vassar College, where she is the coordinator of the Adolescent Education Certification Program and a participating faculty member in the programs in International Studies, Urban Studies, and Women’s Studies.
“This book fills a void in explaining in vivid, engaging detail how a school committed to education through human rights—or, as the school might call it, education based in the recognition of human dignity—is structured and functions, and how students benefit from this space…this book is a major contribution”
—Journal of Human Rights
"Those on the frontlines in the struggle for schools free of militarization and racist criminalization deserve a vision for what schools could be. Centering Dignity in Public Schools provides what most of us don’t have: hope that a school based on human rights can actually exist in urban education. With warts-and-all examples, Maria Hantzopoulos’s characteristically thoughtful and nuanced observations will inspire grassroots activists and educators alike to envision something tangible to fight for."
—Sally Lee, executive director, Teachers Unite
"At a moment when schools are under pressure to regard students as little more than potential test scores, Maria Hantzopoulos articulates a radically humane vision of schooling -- one that insists on the fundamental dignity of young people. The testimonies in this book remind us that schools can, in fact, be transformational communities. This is a work of head and heart, a call to reimagine schools as sites of critique and collaboration, purpose and possibility."
—Bill Bigelow, curriculum editor, Rethinking Schools
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