At the Schoolhouse Gate: Lessons in Intellectual Freedom - Softcover

Pipkin, Gloria; Lent, ReLeah Cossett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0325003955 ISBN 13: 9780325003955

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books,U.S., 2002

Synopsis

Click here to read the NCTE Council Chronicle review of At the Schoolhouse Gate: Lessons in Intellectual Freedom!

"It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." With this pronouncement in 1969, Justice Abe Fortas laid down the law. But this has by no means meant that intellectual freedom reigns supreme. Far from it-American public schools can be the worst offenders, as Gloria Pipkin and ReLeah Cossett Lent make clear in this extraordinary account of courage, commitment, and caring for the teaching profession.

Over the last two decades Pipkin and Lent have worked together to build a tradition of intellectual freedom within public schools. Their book describes their struggles as cultural workers, the pedagogical and legal strategies they employed, the resistance they encountered, the lessons they learned, and the impact that they've seen on the lives of the students they serve. Their story brings vividly to life some of the most important questions in public education today:

• Do First Amendment protections apply to teachers and students in K-12?
• Who controls what we can read and write in schools?
• Is inquiry or indoctrination at the heart of schooling?
• Can critical literacy survive the machinations of shortsighted bureaucrats and board members?

Through two intertwined stories spanning nearly two decades, the authors address these questions. They also provide specific strategies for teachers trapped in similar circumstances. Emotionally intense, yet practical, At the Schoolhouse Gate provides for every teacher what every good teacher wants for his or her students: inspiration and elevation.

About this title

About the Author

ReLeah Cossett Lent was a middle and high school teacher before becoming a founding member of a statewide literacy project at the University of Central Florida. She is now an international consultant, writing and speaking about adolescent literacy, Common Core, and school leadership. Her latest book is Overcoming Textbook Fatigue: 21st Century Tools to Invigorate Learning (ASCD). ReLeah's work with Jimmy Santiago Baca, award-winning poet and writer, led to a book and CD for reaching at-risk adolescents, Adolescents on the Edge, Stories and Lessons to Transform Learning (Heinemann). She has also written Keep Them Reading: An Anti-Censorship Guide for Educators and Literacy for Real: Reading, Thinking and Learning in the Content Areas (Teachers College Press), Engaging Adolescent Learners and Literacy Learning Communities (Heinemann). ReLeah's first two books, co-authored with Gloria Pipkin and published by Heinemann won the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Award and the NCTE/Slate Intellectual Freedom Award. ReLeah was also the recipient of the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award in 1999. You can find her at www.releahlent.com.

Gloria Pipkin taught language arts in Florida public schools for more than twenty years. Since leaving the school system, she has written widely about censorship and other education issues. Her current struggles for intellectual freedom focus on resisting the orthodoxy imposed by high-stakes testing. Her email address is gpipkin@i-1.net.

Edition details

• Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books,U.S.
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0325003955
• ISBN 13: 9780325003955
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256