The Education Wars - by Jennifer C Berkshire & Jack Schneider (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A guide to the core issues driving the education wars, offering essential information about issues, actors, and potential outcomes"--

Book Synopsis

A perfectly timed book for the educational resistance-those of us who believe in public schools

Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are seeking to ban books, limit what educators can teach, and threaten the very foundations of public education. What's behind these efforts? Why are our schools suddenly so vulnerable? And how can the millions of Americans who love their public schools fight back? In this concise, hard-hitting guide, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider answer these questions and chart a way forward.

The Education Wars explains the sudden obsession with race and gender in schools, as well as the ascendancy of book-banning efforts. It offers a clear analysis of school vouchers and the impact they'll have on school finances. It deciphers the movement for "parents' rights," explaining the rights that students and taxpayers also have. And it reveals how the ostensible pursuit of "religious freedom" opens the door to discrimination against vulnerable children.
Berkshire and Schneider outline the core issues driving the education wars, offering essential information about issues, actors, and potential outcomes. In so doing, they lay out what is at stake for parents, teachers, and students and provide a road map for ensuring that public education survives this present assault.

A book that will enrage and enlighten the millions of citizens who believe in their public schools, here is a long-overdue handbook and guide to action.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Education Wars:
"The Education Wars is an invaluable guide for supporters of public education, making the case for the defense of an American institution under attack."
-Forbes

"In The Education Wars: A Citizen's Guide and Defense Manual, education journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education historian Jack Schneider lay out, in compact and accessible terms, the deadly threats posed to our nation's public schools by deep-pocketed networks of right-wing privatizers."
--Jacobin

"Berkshire and Schneider do a fabulous job highlighting hypocrisy . . . while concisely cataloging the billionaires and think tanks funding this fight. It's an invaluable primer on what's motivating the public education culture wars. "

--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"[Berkshire and Schneider] show a path for protecting the fundamentals of what makes public schools so important. This is a good addition to a growing body of protest."
--Booklist

"A history of the nation's cultural conflicts over public education and a call to action in our current one. . . . Readers will come away inspired and, hopefully, energized."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of public education in the United States. Berkshire and Schneider provide an important context for the assault on our children's freedom to learn, along with a blueprint for how to survive these antidemocratic attacks and win the education wars."
--Heather McGhee, bestselling author of The Sum of Us

"Who would want to 'take down the education system as we know it'--and why? Read this fast-paced, lucid, and gripping account to understand who is behind the escalating attacks on public education and what, exactly, they seek. And if you care about the future, share the stories here of how concerned communities are rising to protect our schools. They need help."
--Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains

"The public school is the most democratic institution the United States has ever created. For generations it has forged social mobility, increased equality, and the educational dreams of millions. Berkshire and Schneider's work demonstrates with powerful detail and moving testimonies how the Republican party is hellbent to privatize and destroy public schools, and thereby tear asunder the nation's pluralistic future. The authors quite appropriately do not take prisoners. This book is both a revealing exposéeacute; of and a practical guide to the most significant of our culture wars. If you love your public schools, you will have to fight to save them; and the war has only just begun."
--David Blight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass and the graduate of four public schools and two public universities

"Berkshire and Schneider are true champions of public education. Sobering and thought-provoking, The Education Wars delivers a powerful perspective on recurring and novel challenges confronting public education in the United States. The Education Wars calls upon everyone--including educators, families, community members, and beyond--to actively participate in reaffirming, revitalizing, and reconceptualizing our support for and expectations of our nation's public schools. In this moment, there is little more important than building a movement to promote, pr

About the Author

Jack Schneider is the author of six books, including A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and The Education Wars (both co-authored with Jennifer C. Berkshire and published by The New Press). He is the Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he directs the Center for Education Policy. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Jennifer C. Berkshire is a freelance journalist and a host of the education podcast Have You Heard. The co-author (with Jack Schneider) of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and The Education Wars (both published by The New Press), she teaches in the Boston College Prison Education Program and lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts.