The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling And The Assault On Public Educaton (Positions: Education, Politics and Culture)

Book Description

The story of the Edison Schools is a gripping tale of money, kids, and greed. What began in the 1980s as an enterprise to transform public schools quickly became a troubled business battling falling test scores and dismal stock prices. How did the most ambitious for-profit education company in U.S. history lose respect, money, and credibility in such a short time?

Revealing how American "McEducation" went from glory to crisis, The Edison Schools tracks entrepreneur Christopher Whittle's plan to introduce a standardized nationwide curriculum and cut administrative waste. Education specialist Kenneth J. Saltman finds that the critics' predictions came true in Edison schools across the country: Experienced teachers left in droves, students were virtually given answers to standardized tests to drive up scores, and difficult students were "counselored" out.

Saltman uses the Edison saga to highlight key debates about the role of schools in American democracy and illuminate broader issues of privatization and cultural diversity. Showing how the profit motive helped created "Edron," the book will force teachers, parents, students, and general readers to reconsider the role of private money in this critical part of our public life.

* A full expose of the Edison schools, the largest attempt ever to privatize public education
* Uses the schools to study larger issues of accountability, trust in our institutions, and the social role of public education
* Uncovers the reasons for the collapse of Edison, from falsified score reports and accounting scandals to a near-takeover by right-wing radicals
Kenneth J. Saltman is the co-editor of Education as Enforcement, and author of Collateral Damage and Strange Love: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market.

Customer Reviews:

Dueling Visions.......2005-03-26

The role of public schools in a democratic society is undergoing scrutiny on a scale never before seen in this country. Do schools exist primarily to educate thinking voters or to provide docile workers for multinational corporations? Kenneth J. Saltman reveals the real motives of neoliberals who are behind the carefully orchestrated campaign to privatize all schools under the guise of helping children. It's a true story that contains all the elements of a thriller movie. And the author tells it exceedingly well, using the Edison Schools as the focal point. Concerned citizens need to read "The Edison Schools" in conjunction with the excellent "Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?" by Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian. Both books describe how corporations are hijacking American education. While Saltman confines his case to the Edison Schools, Emery and Ohanian go beyond one company in delivering a compelling manifesto.

Walt Gardner taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District and was a lecturer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education.

Book Description

Why, in a scientific age, do people routinely turn to astrologers, mediums, cultists, and every kind of irrational practitioner rather than to science to meet their spiritual needs? The answer, according to Richard J. Bird, is that science, especially biology, has embraced a view of life that renders meaningless the coincidences, serendipities, and other seemingly significant occurrences that fill people's everyday existence.

Evolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the surrounding world. This book proposes an alternative view of evolving complexity. Bird argues that randomness means not disorder but infinite order. Complexity arises not from many random events of natural selection (although these are not unimportant) but from the "playing out" of chaotic systems -- which are best described mathematically. When we properly understand the complex interplay of chaos and life, Bird contends, we will see that many events that appear random are actually the outcome of order.

Customer Reviews:

A Thought-Provoking Book.......2005-10-24

Bird makes a strong case for the use of Chaos theory and Fractals to model life. But he sometimes goes too far and seems to ascribe more power to the mathematics than it actually has; he makes it sound mystical at times. On page 266, the paragraph starting with Chomsky is very profound but isolated and not developed in the remainder of the text. All in all, I recommend the book.

Critique of Neo-Darwinism .......2005-04-29

This fascinating voyage braiding evolutionary thinking with chaos theory starts with a cogent critique of current Neo-Darwinism in a fashion reminiscent of Robert Wesson's _Beyond Natural Selection_. Students of evolution are seldom aware of the criticisms of Darwin springing from scientists themselves, or of the attempts to really grapple with the problems without the distractions of the current Darwin debate, which is mostly propaganda.

Hour of Our Delight: Cosmic Evolution, Order, and Complexity

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Hour of Our Delight: Cosmic Evolution, Order, and Complexity
Hubert Reeves
Manufacturer: W H Freeman & Co (Sd)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Evolution, Order and Complexity (Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy, 2)

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Evolution, Order and Complexity (Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy, 2)
Kennet Boulding
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

b /b b i Evolution, Order and Complexity /i /b represents the cutting edge of current thinking which challenges the natural/social dichotomy thesis by showing how the application of ideas which derive from biology can be applied and offer insight into the social realm. The volume introduces general system theory to the methodological debate on the relationship between social and natural sciences and presents a multidisciplinary approach. All of the contributors demonstrate that it is possible to explore the relationship and unity of the social and natural worlds without portraying one as a crude reduction of the other.

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This volume of essays explores the relationship between the natural and social worlds using general system theory.

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EVOLUTION ORDER & COMPLEXITY
Elias Kahil
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N6D6D4

Book Description

Before he trailed off into the wilds of Mexico, never to be heard from again, Ambrose Bierce achieved a public persona as "bitter Bierce" and "the devil's lexicographer." He left behind a nasty reputation and more than ninety short stories that are perfect expressions of his sardonic genius. Brought together in this volume, these stories represent an unprecedented accomplishment in American literature. In their iconoclasm and needle-sharp irony, their formal and thematic ingenuity and element of surprise, they differ markedly from the fiction admired in Bierce's time. Readers familiar with the classic An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge will want to turn to Bierce's other Civil War stories. Also included here are his horror stories, among them The Death of Halpin Frayser and The Damned Thing, and such tall tales as Oil of Dog and A Cargo of Cat.

Customer Reviews:

Andrew's Review.......2006-11-13

The story, An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge, had vivid descriptions of the scenery. It gave me an idea of what people might think about before they die.

I would not recommend it, because overall, to me, it was boring. It was hard to understand the first time I read the short story. However, the second time it was more clear to me what was happening. It was confusing the way the author went from dream to reality.

Great collection of short stories, the title is incorrect.......2004-02-26

Ambrose Bierce was a fine writer and this is a good sampling of his short stories. It is not, however, a complete collection of his short stories. I particularly missed "One Summer Night" and there are a number of other stories that could have been been included. Still, this collection is well worth reading.

I suppose this must be death.......2001-10-18

Ambrose Bierce's most famous story is An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and many of his stories follow that same kind of pattern: an event is related with some surprising or revelatory twist at the end. The stories of the Civil War are especially interesting as they are not at all typical writings about war. Bierce does not see the battle so much as one of North against South rather he sees the war as the child sees the war in his story Chickamauga, his attitude is one combining fascination at the spectacle and utter disgust. Life is an unresolved jumble of confused forces and mixed emotions for everyone in Bierce's haunting tales that read like dreams but dreams informed by much contact with reality as Bierce was wounded twice(once in the head)in the war he describes. The descriptions of Civil War battles are told with great precision(and alone make this volume worth having) though there is always an additional element to make them more than war reportage, Bierce turns his accounts into stories because he sees through all the cannon smoke to the small detail which encapsulates the essential thing about an event. In one of my favorites, Killed at Resaca, a courageous captain gallops across a field to deliver a crucial message only to find the field is impassable because of a deep gully, instead of turning around however he merely waits for the enemy to shoot him. Going through his personal things a fellow soldier, the narrator of the story, finds a letter which explains this resolve. The letter reads:"...I could bear to hear of my soldier- lover's death, but not of his cowardice." Later, when the narrator has a chance to return the letter to its author he is asked by her how her soldier-lover died. "He was bitten by a snake,"is the narrators reply. Bierce's pen was dipped in wormwood and acid said H.L. Mencken. His stories of soldiers and civilians are told with a bitter and venomous clarity. His humor was always of the sort aquainted with the gallows. He said at age 71,"I am so old I am ashamed to be alive." And so he rode off to Mexico. It's hard to imagine Stephen Crane existing without the example of Ambrose Bierce just as it is hard to imagine Bierce without Poe. What a strange tradition of independents we have.

Civil War Survivor and Damn Good Author.......2001-08-22

Ambrose Bierce was the one of the 2 writers of major significance to fight in and survive the Civil War (the other being Sidney Lanier). He was bitter to begin with, but the experience changed him into an even more cynical man. An eloquent writer, his best subject is fear: his ghost stories are dark and spooky - the civil war stories are as well, but with the added horror of a very real war and fear of battle. "Chickamauga" is one of my favorites - Bierce was actually at the battle but the story is fictional, and adds a supernatural angle to an infamous time and place. His writings are ghostly and vivid tales of America in the mid 19th century. The horrific experiences encountered in his tales are both real and imagined. If you are a ghost story fan or an American history/Civil War buff, you'll enjoy Bierce.

bitter wit.......2000-12-29

Ambrose Bierce is as famous for the circumstances surrounding the end of his life as for his bitter fatalistic prose. Bierce was a journalist/author and a Civil War veteran. In 1913, after the breakup of his marriage and the death of his sons, he set out for Mexico to meet Pancho Villa and observe the Mexican Revolution at first hand. He wrote to a friend:

Goodbye, if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia!

With that, he disappeared into Mexico and was never heard from again, fueling wild speculation about his fate (i.e., Carols Fuentes' novel The Old Gringo). A fitting end for an author whose works combined a bleak view of life with elements of mystery.

Bierce's Civil War stories are bleak little tales of death and destruction. There's one here that nicely captures his cynical world view--most of us saw a film version of it in grade school--An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Peyton Farquhar is a Southern planter captured behind Union lines on a spy mission. As the story opens, he stands upon Owl Creek Bridge with a noose around his neck thinking of the wife and children he will never see again. But when the Union soldiers try to hang him, the noose slips and he swims off downstream. He flees across country until he finally reaches home and as he approaches his open armed wife...the rope snaps tight and we realize that he had imagined the whole episode on his way down. Here in one tidy package is the brutality of war, the futility of life and the bitter wit that characterizes his work.

He's not for all tastes, and I'm not generally big on short stories, but I like him.

GRADE: B

The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce
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The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce
Jerome (ed) Hopkins
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MVW3A2

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THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF AMBROSE BIERCE - BOLUME II: THE WORLD OF WAR AND THE WORLD OF TALL TALES - BALLANTINE 02449-4-095

Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GRAKES

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The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce Vol. 1 the World of Horror

Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Bierce, Ambrose | ( B ) | Authors, A-Z | Horror | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: B000I3JBRW

The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 1: The World of Horror
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The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 1: The World of Horror

Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Bierce, Ambrose | ( B ) | Authors, A-Z | Horror | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: B000EIO0QI

The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce: Volume I: The World of Horror
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The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce: Volume I: The World of Horror
Ernest Jerome Hopkins
Manufacturer: Ballantine
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JMAB7Q

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The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce: Volume II: The World of War and the World of Tall Tales
Ernest Jerome Hopkins
Manufacturer: Ballantine
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JMAB7G

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The Complete Short Stories Of Ambrose Bierce; Volume II, The World of WAr and the World of Tall Tales
Ambrose Bierce
Manufacturer: Ballantine
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000KD3V1W

Complete Short Stories Volume 2
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Complete Short Stories Volume 2
Ambrose Bierce
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0345024494

Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce
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Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce
comp) Ambrose Bierce (Hopkins
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska/Bison
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IZB6DW

Book Description

Set on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits--an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies--who one day take up residence in a tree house. AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, "that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."

This volume also includes Capote's A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called "unobstrusively beautiful...a superlative book."

Customer Reviews:

A Word Portrait.......2005-12-30

This early Novella by Truman Capote clearly demonstrates his ability to put together a word portrait. As an example: "... I would hear the tantalizing tremor of their voices flowing like sapsyrup through the old wood."

The characters are richly portrayed in this gem of Southern fiction.

A Great and Touching Novel.......2005-05-12

Capote found his full voice in this, his second novel. It is a fantasy based on characters from his own life, including himself, his aunt Sook Faulk, to whom the book is dedicated "in memory of affections deep and true", another aunt, and their servant.

Capote's prose is beautiful and lucid as it carries the reader through the book at a swift pace, and this novel achieves the rare combination of ease of reading with depth of thought and emotion.

A Miracle of Writing: Capote's Genius at Full Throttle.......2004-12-08

[I wrote this review in 1999 as "A Reader." I hope more people read it and read this book.]
For years I've known about this work but never read it until now. I've been fishing about in contemporary fiction, looking for something entertaining, enlightening, and superbly well written, but my search ended entirely when I finally read this novel, written in 1951. Set in the South, in the countryside, this story brilliantly draws you into its magical surroundings. Its three main characters, Dolly, Collin, and Catherine, are real presences that emerge from the lush southern environs as complex, blooming beings whose lives take time to develop and understand. There is nothing slick about this writing; it's just classically elegant and clear. The story is packed with interesting people and proceeds as if inspired by Twain. It is entertaining, poetic, and meaningful all at once. I found myself rereading the opening pages, picturing the scene, and feeling how brilliant the writing was in its elegiac and inspired imagery. The story is simple: a young boy, orphaned, lives with his two eccentric aunts in a small town in the South. One aunt is mean-spirited and selfish, and the other is sweet, other-worldly, and gentle. When the mean aunt tries to exploit the sweet one by mass producing a folk medicine remedy the sweet aunt learned about from a traveling gypsy woman, the sweet aunt runs away from home with the orphan boy and her best friend, a strange Indian woman. They don't run too far, however, just to a tree house in a nearby China tree. From that point on, everyone learns something about themselves. This southern world is a generous place to Truman Capote, and it has mercies to give and lessons to be learned. In fact, it's something of a magical world, almost a precursor of the magical realism of Marquez and others. But as the characters learn about themselves, so we the readers learn too, about what love is, about change, and about what we accept in life. For Capote to have written this book at the age of 26 is truly a miracle. This book alone puts him in league with the literary giants. I highly recommend "The Grass Harp" to anyone looking for that one great book to read and treasure.

An Often Overlooked Gem .......2004-11-17

TRUMAN CAPOTE's wrote THE GRASS HARP early in his career and it is an often overlooked gem. This sweet, eccentric, moving and decidedly southern tale is the leisurely paced story of the repercussions that ensue when three townfolk decide to up and run away to live in a treehouse on the outskirts of town. Three quickly becomes five and eventually swells to even more as the makeshift home becomes a sort of paradise and refuge where stories are shared, closeness is established, and love blooms....think FLANNERY O'CONNOR meets SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON with a dash of STEEL MAGNOLIAS. Themes of finding one's place and path and making oneself known are skillfully woven into the narrative. It has the feel of a fantastic and utterly charming myth. Primary assets are the "thick as molasses" southern mood and syntax as well as a bevy of unforgettable characters.

an odd little treasure.......2004-02-04

what a sweet, eccentric, charming little tale!

two old ladies take a young boy to live in a tree after a beloved tincture recipie is stolen from one of the women. they don't stay in the tree long, but while they do- a strange cast of character's pass by, drop by, & stay for awhile.

Book Description

Set in a small Southern town in the 1930s, this classic work tells the story of three endearing misfits--an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies--who one day take up residence in a tree house. Now a major motion picture from Fine Line Features, starring Sissy Spacek, Walter Matthau, Piper Laurie, and Nell Carter.

Customer Reviews:

The Great American Novel.......2001-03-28

The Grass Harp is a perfect and beautiful piece of American fiction. I have read this novel at least ten times, and each time it moves me. The language is rich and textured, the characters are real and true, the story is simple and touching. To read Capote is to fall in love with an American South that is no more- a time and place that can only exist in the imagination.

My best one........1999-07-14

I read this one only in Japanese,but it has been one of my best storys. I think this is not as perfect as "Other voice,_" but,or therefor,I can feel something that I used to have,and now gone enywhere,from this novel.

IT WAS AWESOME ESPECIALLY THE CROSSED EYED TWINS ........1997-07-13

I ESPECIALLY LIKED IT WHEN SISTER IDA CAME INTO TOWN.HER 15 CHILDREN NEEDED TO APPEAR MORE OFTEN.I WAS IN LOVE WITH THE CROSSED EYED TWIN

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The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night
Truman Capote
Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000EW0L4Y

Product Description

Here for the first time in one volume are two brilliant books by the author of America's number one bestseller "In Cold Blood". The Grass Harp is a story about people in search of love. They defy the narrow conventions of a small town in order to find their own brand of freedom, enjoy momentary heady release, and then make their individual compromises with reality. In a Tree of Night and other stories Trumean Capote explores the misery, horror and lonliness of modern life. Two of these tales, "miriam" and "Shut a Final Door" have won O. Henry awards.

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The Grass Harp
Truman CAPOTE
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000RJOBCM

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The grass harp
Truman Capote
Manufacturer: New American Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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The Grass Harp & a Tree of Night
Truman Capote
Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000TYBSKI

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The Grass Harp (Vintage Signet #1020)
Truman Capote
Manufacturer: New American LIbrary
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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The Grass Harp 1st Edition
Truman Capote
Manufacturer: RANDOM HOUSE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000TNEQTY

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Grass Harp 1ST Edition Thus
Truman Capote
Manufacturer: SIGNET BOOKS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000TNDZFA

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