Synopses & Reviews
Education in the Post-9/11 Decade is a collection of ten essays examining education—mostly higher education—as civic engagement. These essays are the finest works of scholarship on education published over the last decade in JAC, an award-winning journal of rhetoric, politics, and culture. The essays in Part 1 attempt to historicize higher education and to unpack many of its underlying dynamics. Part 2 examines emerging trends in the politics of education—trends that to the authors in this collection are alarming. Balancing the anxiety and seeming pessimism of Part 2 are the distinctly optimistic essays in Part 3, which collectively interject a note of hope for the future of education. Collectively, the essays in this volume analyze in a substantive and rigorous manner a number of key issues in the politics of education. This volume should be of great interest to university faculty and graduate students regardless of their disciplinary areas, and generally to anyone interested in the future of higher education in an increasingly corporatized academic setting.
Review
"Education as Civic Engagement brings together some of the best essays yet published on the history, politics, and hopes for the future of higher education. This is a brilliant collection that is both rigorous and accessible. Given the crucial role that higher education plays in developing the formative culture necessary for critical literacy, social responsibility, and civic engagement, this book is a must-read and should be placed in the hands of all students, policy makers, politicians, social movements, and educators themselves. Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham have once again made a vital contribution to the ongoing conversation on public values, civic engagement, and the meaning and purpose of higher education." -- Henry Giroux, McMaster University
"Education as Civic Engagement should be read by anyone teaching the democratic skills of critical inquiry, collaborative work, communication, and most certainly by those who prepare teachers for public education where these skills begin to appear in the curriculum. And the ideas in this volume must be discussed in classes that touch on the structure, governance, finance, and history of American public higher education. We cannot go on without understanding the real situations we face." --John W. Presley, Illinois State University
Synopsis
A collection of the finest works of scholarship examining education - mostly higher education - as civic engagement published over the last decade in JAC, an award-winning journal of rhetoric, politics, and culture.
Synopsis
Education as Civic Engagement: Toward a More Democratic Society is a collection of ten essays examining education—mostly higher education—as civic engagement. These essays are the finest works of scholarship on education published over the last decade in JAC, an award-winning journal of rhetoric, politics, and culture. Collectively, the works in this volume analyze in a substantive and rigorous manner a number of key issues in the politics of education.
About the Author
Gary A. Olson is a noted scholar of rhetoric and culture and a keen observer of higher education in America. He has served as a both a university provost and a dean. Olson writes a popular monthly column on academic administration for the Chronicle of Higher Education and currently is a professor of English at Idaho State University.
Lynn Worsham is a professor of English at Idaho State University and editor of JAC, an interdisciplinary scholarly journal of rhetoric, politics, and culture. She has published seven books, including The Politics of Possibility: Encountering the Radical Imagination and Race, Rhetoric, and the Postcolonial (both with Gary Olson). She is currently working on a book on psychopathology in America.