High Schools, Race, and America's Future: What Students Can Teach Us About Morality, Diversity, and Community

by Lawrence Blum, Gloria Ladson-Billings (Foreword by)

Overview

In High Schools, Race, and America’s Future, Lawrence Blum offers a lively account of a rigorous high school course on race and racism.

Set in a racially, ethnically, and economically diverse high school, the book chronicles students’ engagement with one another, with a rich and challenging academic curriculum, and with questions that relate powerfully to their daily lives.

Blum, an acclaimed moral philosopher whose work focuses on issues of race, reflects with candor, insight, and humor on the challenges and surprises encountered in teaching—the unexpected turns in conversation, the refreshing directness of students’ questions, the “aha” moments and the awkward ones, and the paradoxes of his own role as a white college professor teaching in a multiracial high school classroom. High Schools, Race, and America’s Future provides an invaluable resource for those who want to teach students to think deeply and talk productively about race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612504674
Publisher:	Harvard Education Press
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lawrence Blum is the Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education and a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He has written extensively on race and racism, moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of education, moral education, multicultural education, philosophy and the Holocaust, race and film, moral emotions, and other topics. He is the author of four books—Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), A Truer Liberty: Simone Weil and Marxism (with V. J. Seidler) (Routledge, 1989), Moral Per ception and Particularity (Cambridge University Press, 1994), and “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Cornell University Press, 2002), which was selected as the Social Philosophy Book of the Year by the North American Society for Social Philosophy. Blum has also taught at Teachers College, Stanford School of Education, and UCLA (in philosophy). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

"Blum's good ideas should get in the hands of many teachers, administrators, and parents who want to try such things in schools, or to evaluate or rethink their current practices...This class is a powerful metaphor for a racially literate society, as well as a thoughtful narrative of a valuable educational experiment." — Sophie Bell, Radical Teacher


"The personal nature of racial identity for the students and their candid and poignant reflections on race are among the many strengths of this engaging book. Although of special interest to teachers involved in inner-city education, the book has much to offer general readers."— K. Ryan, CHOICE


"Blum is to be commended for the manner in which his book and course move across and between many 'borders' that academics rarely cross... The book is an accessible one I strongly recommend for academics across the related fields and high school teachers, and I dare say high school students themselves—if they are looking for a challenging but relevant book. Taking his own advice, Blum leaves his comfort zone to reach new audiences, and to work across fields and sites to make an exemplary contribution." — Tatyana Kleyn, Teachers College Record

From the Publisher