Social Reform

Reform or Revolution, also titled Social Reform or Revolution?, is an 1899 pamphlet by Polish-German Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg, in which she argues that trade unions, reformist political parties, and the expansion of social democracy could not create a socialist society as Eduard Bernstein, among others, argued. She contends from a historical materialist perspective that capitalism is economically unsustainable and will eventually collapse and that a revolution is necessary to transform capitalism into socialism.

For over a generation, shocking cases of censorship at America's colleges and universities have taught students the wrong lessons about living in a free society. Drawing on a decade of experience battling for freedom of speech on campus, First Amendment lawyer Greg Lukianoff reveals how higher education fails to teach students to become critical thinkers: by stifling open debate, our campuses are supercharging ideological divisions, promoting groupthink, and encouraging an unscholarly certainty about complex issues.

With its practical advice and compassionate tone, The Myth of Laziness shows parents how to nurture their child's strengths and improve their classroom productivity. Most important, it shows how correcting these problems in childhood will help children live a fulfilling and productive adult life.

In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration.

Despite being immensely popular - and immensely lucrative - education is grossly overrated. In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity - in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee.

Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they're wooing higher-level academics.

Do you need parenting advice on how to inspire your child to love learning? Whether you homeschool, or send your kids to public or private school, this is essential listening for your situation. Why? Because schooling has become a disaster. Your child's interests and uniqueness are disregarded, and structured curriculum and standards like Common Core place them on a conveyor belt that treats all children the same. This system crushes a child's curiosity. Your child deserves better!

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?

Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved.

First published in 1999, American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century offered a comprehensive introduction to the central issues facing American colleges and universities. This thoroughly revised edition brings the classic volume up to date. The contributors have rewritten every chapter to address major changes in higher education, including the rise of organized social movements, the problem of income inequality and stratification, and the growth of for-profit and distance education.

"At risk." "Low." "Title I kids." If you've worked with students, you've probably heard or said these coded labels that reflect deficit thinking. This focus on weakness is a pervasive, powerful judgment that continues to harm students long after they leave school. It's time for educators to hack deficit thinking, think about SEL and about strength-based teaching, and reframe teaching and learning.

Different minds learn differently. We must pay attention to individual learning patterns, to individual minds so that we can maximize children's performance in school and in life. In A Mind at a Time, Dr. Levine shows us how.

Colleges fiercely defend America's deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn't actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges' pursuit of wealth and prestige stack the deck in favor of the children of privilege.

As the revenues generated by big-time college sports continue to skyrocket, virtually all of the debate involves whether (and how much) student-athletes should be paid for play. Kenneth L. Shropshire and Collin D. Williams Jr., argue that "student" has to come first: the focus should be on prioritizing a meaningful education. They draw on new research to reveal that it has become increasingly difficult for college athletes to balance school and sports, much less a social life, leading to serious economic, professional, and emotional consequences for young people.

How is it that, half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones? In his important new book, Five Miles Away, a World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia - one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s, limiting the scope of desegregation, laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day.

Higher education faces a looming demographic storm. Decades-long patterns in fertility, migration, and immigration persistently nudge the country toward the Hispanic Southwest. As a result, the Northeast and Midwest...expect to lose five percent of their college-aged populations between now and the mid-2020s. In Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, Nathan D. Grawe has developed the Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI), which relies on data from the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) to estimate the probability of college-going using basic demographic variables.

Almost overnight, America's public schools have become morally toxic. They are especially poisonous for the hearts and minds of children from religious families of every faith - ordinary families who value traditional morality and plain old common sense. Parents' first duty is to their children - to their intellect, their character, their souls. The facts on the ground point to one conclusion: Get out now.

One of the greatest American achievements in the 20th century was the creation of public schools and universal education, an ideal now deeply at risk. Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks provides a critical account of the making and unmaking of public education in Cutting School, the first book to foreground how vast racial and economic divides are part and parcel of the push to privatize our education system.

Synthesizing cutting-edge research and first-hand reporting, Peg Tyre offers parents far smarter and more sophisticated ways to assess a classroom and decide if the school and the teacher have the right stuff. Passionate and persuasive, The Good School empowers parents to make sense of headlines; constructively engage teachers, administrators, and school boards; and figure out the best options for their children.

After decades of off-shoring, downsizing, shuttered factories, and stranded blue collar workers, the United States is on the edge of an industrial renaissance. This is news that would have seemed beyond improbable even a decade ago, but companies like Motorola Mobility, Apple, BMW, Bosch, and Volkswagen are opening plants and committing millions of dollars to build new products here.