American education as we know it today—guaranteed by the state to serve every child in the country—is still less than a hundred years old. It's no wonder we haven't agreed yet as to exactly what role education should play in our society. In these Tanner Lectures, Danielle Allen brings us much closer, examining the ideological impasse between vocational and humanistic approaches that has plagued educational discourse, offering a compelling proposal to finally resolve the dispute.All...

Acting as a counterbalance to the current unworkable law, this book proposes a more realistic way to achieve NCLB’s inspiring vision by ensuring the right to “meaningful educational opportunity” for all students. This timely volume tackles specific provisions in NCLB head-on, such as the popular, but impossible, goal of 100% student proficiency by 2014.“At last, a book on No Child Left Behind that makes sense to school practitioners. All who care about the future of our public scho...

A rethinking of American democracy that puts caring responsibilities at the centerAmericans now face a caring deficit: there are simply too many demands on people’s time for us to care adequately for our children, elderly people, and ourselves.At the same time, political involvement in the United States is at an all-time low, and although political life should help us to care better, people see caring as unsupported by public life ...

This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our ...

John W. Budd's The Thought of Work provides a much needed and highly eloquent statement of the meanings and orientations to work across time and nations. It is essential reading for students of work from senior scholars to beginning undergraduates.— Randy Hodson, Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences The Ohio State University and past editor ― American Sociological ReviewBy drawing explicit attention to diverse, implici...

Revealing the human side of economic lifeOver the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a flourishing and increasingly influential discipline. No one has played a greater role in this development than Viviana Zelizer, one of the world's leading sociologists. Economic Lives synthesizes and extends her most impo...

Despite the vast differences between the Right and the Left over the role of education in the production of inequality one common element both sides share is a sense that education can and should do something about society, to either restore what is being lost or radically alter what is there now. The question was perhaps put most succinctly by the radical educator George Counts in 1932 when he asked "Dare the School Build a New Social Order?", challenging entire generations of educators t...

Is it allowable for your government, or anyone else, to influence or coerce you 'for your own sake'? This is a question about paternalism, or interference with a person's liberty or autonomy with the intention of promoting their good or averting harm, which has created considerable controversy at least since John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Mill famously decried paternalism of any kind, whether carried out by private individuals or the state. In this volume of new essays, leading moral, poli...

Discover the link between ethical leadership and successful educational communities!In an age of accountability and transparency, principals are held responsible for everything from test scores to school finances. Because of this increased accountability, school leaders must regularly confront difficult ethical dilemmas.Ethical Leadership in Schools teaches principals and aspiring principals the concepts that inform ethica...

What must affluent people do to alleviate global poverty? This question has occupied moral and political philosophers for forty years. But the controversy has reached an impasse: approaches like utilitarianism and libertarianism either demand too much of ordinary mortals or else let them off the hook. In Distant Strangers, Judith Lichtenberg shows how a preoccupation with standard moral theories and with the concepts of duty and obligation have led philosophers astray. She argues that ther...

No study of international relations is complete without consideration of foreign policy processes and an understanding of state security, conflict in global politics, and the relationship between the world economy and international behavior. Conflict, Security, Foreign Policy, and International Political Economy: Past Paths and Future Directions in International Studies consists of twelve original essays that point out the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches in these research ar...

All people spend a considerable portion of their lives either as dependents or the caretakers of dependents. The fact of human dependency-a function of youth, severe illness, disability, or frail old age-marks our lives, not only as those who are cared for, but as those who engage in the work of caring. In spite of the time, energy and resources-material and emotional, social and individual-that dependency care requires, these concerns rarely enter into philosophical, legal, and political ...