Hungry Minds in Hard Times
Subtitle: Educating for Complexity for Students of Poverty (Counterpoints (New York, N.Y.), V. 191.)
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing
Published: November 2002
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 191
ISBN-13: 9780820455013
Subjects: General; North American; Popular Culture - General; Public Policy - Social Policy; Political Science; Pop Arts / Pop Culture; Curricula; Education; Educational sociology; Postmodernism and education; United States; Politics/International Relations
Description: A story of liberatory education for poor, working-class, rural, middle school students. Through investigating the reopening of a local coal mine, a group of eighth graders-with teacher Bill Elasky and university professor Rosalie M. Romano-explored the contradictory, contentious, and conflicting perspectives of community members and the coal company. Multiple viewpoints amplified the complexity of the local issue and provided the backdrop for critical literacy, trust and dialogue, and a sense of connection and affinity. This book challenges the belief that a diet of disconnected facts provides nourishment for students from poor and working-class backgrounds. Instead, teaching through complexity is acknowledged as a subversive, necessary act that interrupts the dominant value system, which keeps failing as a way of life for rural and inner city students. [back cover].