The Teacher Uprising of 2018
They’re calling it the “Education Spring,” and what started in a rural county in southwest West Virginia has spread like wildfire and inspired teachers and other public sector workers across […]
Editorials
#SchoolsToo: Educators’ Responsibility to Confront Sexual Violence
The ongoing, persistent verbal and physical violence against women, youth, and LGBTQ communities has not been adequately addressed in most schools. Instead of educating children and youth about gender equity and sexual harassment, schools often create a culture that perpetuates stigma, shame, and silence. Student-on-student sexual assault and harassment occurs on playgrounds, in bathrooms and locker rooms, on buses, and down isolated school hallways. Students experience sexualized language and inappropriate touching, as well as forced sexual acts. And they encounter these at formative stages of their lives that leave scars and shape expectations for a lifetime. What isn’t addressed critically in schools becomes normalized and taken for granted.
Beyond the Travel Ban
In May 2016, while I was carrying out ethnographic research in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, a Form 4 (12th grade) history teacher asked me if I would teach his students about U.S. democracy. We flipped through the history and government textbook to one of the last chapters where the national curriculum outlined political systems in Kenya, England, India, and the United States. It was a peculiar moment to put the U.S. democratic system on display.
Guns Out of Our Schools, Propaganda Out of Our Classrooms
There’s much that we as educators can do to combat gun violence and get guns out of our schools. One of our roles as teachers is to guide students to examine the roots of an issue.
Teaching the Truth About Climate Change Is Up to Us, Because Textbooks Lie
The second installment of our new environmental justice column focuses on one part of a resolution passed by the Portland, Oregon, school board that mandates the school district not use text material that doubts “the severity of the climate crisis or its root in human activities.”
#MeToo and The Color Purple
During a recent conversation, a former high school classmate said, “I always wondered why you left Eureka. I heard that something shameful happened, but I never knew what it was.”
Yes, something shameful happened. My former husband beat me in front of the Catholic Church in downtown Eureka. He tore hunks of hair from my scalp, broke my nose, and battered my body. It wasn’t the first time during the nine months of our marriage. When he fell into a drunken sleep, I found the keys he used to keep me locked inside and I fled, wearing a bikini and a bloodied white fisherman’s sweater. For those nine months I had lived in fear of his hands, of drives into the country where he might kill me and bury my body. I lived in fear that if I fled, he might harm my mother or my sister.
I carried that fear and shame around for years. Because even though I left the marriage and the abuse, people said things like “I’d never let some man beat me.” There was no way to tell them the whole story: How growing up and “getting a man” was the goal, how making a marriage work was my responsibility, how failure was a stigma I couldn’t bear.
Editorial: Making Black Lives Matter in Our Schools
As we return to our schools this fall, we need to rededicate ourselves to building an education system and a society that values Black lives.
Goodbye — and Welcome
This is the first issue of Rethinking Schools magazine in eight years for which Jody Sokolower was not the managing editor. Jody stepped down in April to focus on local […]
EDITORIAL: Little Kids, Big Ideas
Recently, a Rethinking Schools editor was a chaperone on a field trip when he overheard a 2nd-grade student talking about how he wanted to “nuke the world.” Taken aback, he […]
Enseñando en la era de Trump
Repensando las escuelas nació en la era de Reagan. Celebramos nuestro décimo tercer aniversario en la era de Trump. Sabemos algo acerca de mantenernos esperanzados durante los tiempos difíciles. Hace […]
Bilingual Education: Stories from the Heart
As always, Rethinking Schools has several new books in process. This issue we feature three articles destined for one of these: Rethinking Bilingual Education, edited by Grace Cornell Gonzales, Elizabeth […]
‘Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality’ and the Power of Grassroots Activism
The youth on our cover is Lana “kQween” Grant. She was photographed by Lois Bielefeld as part of her Androgeny series. kQween’s pride—and the empathy and respect of Bielefeld’s image—are […]
Activism Is Good Teaching
Two elementary school teachers in Albuquerque resist the proliferation of harmful standardized tests. They see it as a professional responsibility.
Black Students’ Lives Matter
We’re at a tipping point. The killings of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Renisha McBride—and far too many other African Americans—have put to rest the myth of […]
Editorial: Moving Beyond ‘Media Literacy
When looking at media literacy, tough issues arise, in particular issues of commercialism (too much) and democracy (not enough).
The Trouble with the Common Core
It isn’t easy to find common ground on the Common Core. Already hailed as the “next big thing” in education reform, the Common Core State Standards are being rushed into […]
Connecting the Dots
The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom this past summer produced some brilliant commentary about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. One of the […]
The Problems with the Common Core
The rollout of the Common Core has seemed more like a marketing campaign than an educational plan. A look at the funders, origins, and uses of the new standards shows why the pushback is building.
Education in the Time of the Coronavirus
Now is not the time to pull away from social justice education activism, but to find new ways to express it. As schools go onto the internet (at least for older students) — or into hibernation — we need to make sure this happens in a way that does not promote greater inequality.
The Green New Deal and Our Schools
By the editors of Rethinking Schools As Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope wrote recently in The Nation, “There is a runaway train racing toward us, and its name is climate change. […]
Nurturing Student Activists in the Time of Trump
By the editors of Rethinking Schools The 2018–19 school year has begun at a time of terrifying climate disruption, seemingly endless war, spectacular inequality, xenophobic and fascist revival, police brutality […]