Their book is an inspiring guide to current and future school teachers and to college and university professors—indeed to everyone who teaches anything to anyone else.   Arguing that teaching is an art, Banner and Cannon help teachers understand its components. They analyze the specific qualities of successful teachers and the ways in which these qualities promote learning and understanding. Throughout, they illustrate their discussion with sharply etched portraits of fictional teachers who exemplify—or fail to exemplify—a particular quality. Neither a how-to book nor a consideration of the philosophy, methods, or activities of teaching, this book, more precisely, assesses what it takes to teach. It encourages teachers to consider how they might strengthen their own level of professional performance.

    With hard-hitting information and a touch of comic relief, Berliner, Glass, and their Associates separate fact from fiction in this comprehensive look at modern education reform. They explain how the mythical failure of public education has been created and perpetuated in large part by political and economic interests that stand to gain from its destruction. They also expose a rapidly expanding variety of organizations and media that intentionally misrepresent facts. Many of these organizations suggest that their goal is unbiased service in the public interest when, in fact, they represent narrow political and financial interests. Where appropriate, the authors name the promoters of these deceptions and point out how they are served by encouraging false beliefs.This provocative book features short essays on important topics to provide every elected representative, school administrator, school board member, teacher, parent, and concerned citizen with much food for thought, as well as reliable knowledge from authoritative sources.

    The emergence of the alt-right alone has fueled a marked increase in racist and anti-Semitic speech. Given its potential for harm, should this speech be banned? Nadine Strossen's HATE dispels the many misunderstandings that have clouded the perpetual debates about "hate speech vs. free speech." She argues that an expansive approach to the First Amendment is most effective at promoting democracy, equality, and societal harmony.Proponents of anti-hate speech laws stress the harms that they fear such speech might lead to: discrimination, violence, and psychic injuries. However, there has been no rigorous analysis to date of whether the laws effectively counter the feared harms. This book fills that gap, examining our actual experience with such laws. It shows that they are not effective in reducing the feared harms, and worse yet, are likely counterproductive. Even in established democracies, enforcement officials use the power these laws give them to suppress vital expression and target minority viewpoints, as was the case in earlier periods of U.S. history. The solution instead, as Strossen shows, is to promote equality and societal harmony through the increasingly vibrant "counterspeech" activism that has been flourishing on U.S. college campuses and in some global human rights movements. Strossen's powerful argument on behalf of free expression promises to shift the debate around this perennially contentious topic.

    Both America’s college and university system, and its K-12 education system, were originally created based on German approaches in the 19th century. Now that it’s the 21st century, Glenn Harlan Reynolds suggests, it’s time for a change.Higher education in America is facing a bust much like the housing bubble. It is the product of cheap credit, coupled with popular expectations of ever-increasing returns on investment and, as with housing prices, the cheap credit has caused college tuitions to vastly outpace inflation and family incomes. Now this bubble is bursting. Reynolds explains the causes and effects of this bubble and the steps colleges and universities must take to ensure their survival. As students become less willing to incur debt for education, colleges and universities will have to adapt to a new world of cost pressures and declining public support.Economist Herb Stein famously said that something that can't go on forever, won't. For decades now, America has been putting ever-growing amounts of money into its K-12 education system, while getting steadily poorer results. Now parents are losing faith in public schools, new alternatives are appearing, and change is on the way. As the best students abandon traditional public schools, Disrupted provides a succinct description of what's wrong, and where the solutions are likely to appear, along with advice for parents, educators, and taxpayers.

    The book includes numerous stories about the way circles have been used in many diverse situations, discussion on the use of proactive, responsive and staff circles, and an overview of restorative practices, with particular emphasis on its relationship to circle processes.

    Instead we are surrendering to populism, nationalism and other forms of tribalism. Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history--in 18th century England when we accidentally discovered the miracle of liberal democratic capitalism.As Americans we are doubly blessed that those radical ideas were written into the Constitution, laying the groundwork for our uniquely prosperous society: - Our rights come from God not from the government. - The government belongs to us; we do not belong to the government. - The individual is sovereign. We are all captains of our own souls. - The fruits of our labors belong to us.In the last few decades, these political virtues have been turned into vices. As we are increasingly taught to view our traditions as a system of oppression, exploitation and "white privilege," the principles of liberty and the rule of law are under attack from left and right.At a moment when authoritarianism, tribalism, identity politics, nationalism, and cults of personality are rotting our democracy from within, Goldberg exposes the West's suicidal tendencies on both sides of the ideological aisle. For the West to survive, we must renew our sense of gratitude for what our civilization has given us and rediscover the ideals that led us out of the bloody muck of the past - or back to the muck we will go.Suicide is painless, liberty takes work.

    True progress happens when humans are free, yet the Progressive agenda substantially diminishes freedom while promising the unachievable. Excuse Me, Professor provides a handy reference for anyone actively engaged in advancing liberty, with essential essays debunking more than 50 Progressive clichés.Does the free market truly ignore the poor? Are humans really destroying the Earth? Is the government truly the first best source to relieve distress?Compiled and edited by Lawrence W. Reed in collaboration with the Foundation for Economic Education and Young America's Foundation, this anthology is an indispensable addition to every freedom lover's arsenal of intellectual ammunition.

    A passionate, personal, urgent book from the man who sparked a national debate."There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it." When Mitch Landrieu addressed the people of New Orleans in May 2017 about his decision to take down four Confederate monuments, including the statue of Robert E. Lee, he struck a nerve nationally, and his speech has now been heard or seen by millions across the country. In his first book, Mayor Landrieu discusses his personal journey on race as well as the path he took to making the decision to remove the monuments, tackles the broader history of slavery, race and institutional inequities that still bedevil America, and traces his personal relationship to this history. His father, as state senator and mayor, was a huge force in the integration of New Orleans in the 1960s and 19070s. Landrieu grew up with a progressive education in one of the nation's most racially divided cities, but even he had to relearn Southern history as it really happened.Equal parts unblinking memoir, history, and prescription for finally confronting America's most painful legacy, In the Shadow of Statues will contribute strongly to the national conversation about race in the age of Donald Trump, at a time when racism is resurgent with seemingly tacit approval from the highest levels of government and when too many Americans have a misplaced nostalgia for a time and place that never existed.

    In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer. That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn't work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.

    Don’t worry: Crazy U is not one of those books. It is instead a disarmingly candid and hilariously subversive chronicle of the journey that millions of parents and their children undertake each year—a journey through the surreal rituals of college admissions. It’s a rollicking ride from the man Christopher Buckley has called “my all-time favorite writer.” Pummeled by peers, creeped out by counselors, and addled by advice books, Andrew Ferguson has come to believe that a single misstep could cost his son a shot at a happy and fulfilling future. He feels the pressure to get it right from the moment the first color brochures land in his mailbox, sent from colleges soliciting customers as though they were sailors come to port. First is a visit with the most sought-after, most expensive—and surely most intimidating—private college consultant in the nation. Then come the steps familiar to parents and their college-bound children, seen through a gimlet eye: a session with a distracted high school counselor, preparations for the SAT and an immersion in its mysteries, unhelpful help from essay coaches and admissions directors, endless campus tours, and finally, as spring arrives, the waiting, waiting, waiting for the envelope that bears news of the future. Meanwhile, Ferguson passes on the tips he’s picked up during their crash course. (Tip number 36: Don’t apply for financial aid after midnight.) He provides a pocket history of higher education in America, recounts the college ranking wars, and casts light on the obscure and not-terribly-seemly world of higher-education marketing. And he dares to raise the question that no one (until now) has been able to answer: Why on earth does it all cost so much? Along the way, something unexpected begins to happen: a new relationship grows between father and son, built from humor, loyalty, and (yes) more than a little shared anxiety. For all its tips and trials, Crazy U is also a story about family. It turns out that the quiet boy who pretends not to be worried about college has lots to teach his father—about what matters in life, about trusting your instincts, about finding your own way. In launching his son into the world,

    From Kapital sprung the economic and political systems that at one time dominated half the earth and for nearly a century kept the world on the brink of war. Even today, more than one billion Chinese citizens live under a regime that proclaims fealty to Marxist ideology. Yet this important tome has been passed over by many readers frustrated by Marx’s difficult style and his preoccupation with nineteenth-century events of little relevance to today's reader.Here Serge Levitsky presents a revised version of Kapital, abridged to emphasize the political and philosophical core of Marx’s work while trimming away much that is now unimportant. Pointing out Marx’s many erroneous predictions about the development of capitalism, Levitsky's introduction nevertheless argues for Kapital's relevance as a prime example of a philosophy of economic determinism that "subordinates the problems of human freedom and human dignity to the issues of who should own the means of production and how wealth should be distributed."Here then is a fresh and highly readable version of a work whose ideas provided inspiration for communist regimes' ideological war against capitalism, a struggle that helped to shape the world today.

    It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.” — Ralph Waldo EmersonThis book is for people who also believe personal freedom is the most important thing in life. In our free world, we can do what want, spend time with people we like, and have a career that gives us joy. And yet, we don’t use our freedom. Why is that?The problem is that we’re held captive by ourselves. On a deeper level, we all strive for the same thing: To be free. It’s in our nature.Every human has the desire and the need to be free. What It Takes To Be Free will lead you on the path to personal freedom. It’s a highly practical guide that’s based on timeless wisdom and personal experience.You’re the ruler of your own kingdom. You can do anything you want, spend time with people you like, and have a career that you love. If you’re willing to do what it takes, you will be free to do those things.

    Be the leader who creates this environment. UnCommon Learning shows you how to transform a learning culture through sustainable and innovative initiatives. It moves straight to the heart of using innovations such as Makerspaces, Blended Learning and Microcredentials. Included in the book: Vignettes to illustrate key ideas Real life examples to show what works Graphs and data to prove initiatives’ impact

    Professor Drezner takes you behind the headlines and into the debates to dispel common myths about prosperity and get at deeper truths. By taking a broad view of economics that includes psychology, sociology, political science, and history, his lectures lead you to fundamental insights about how the modern world works and a deeper understanding of the functioning of the U.S., European, Chinese, and other major economies, as well as an appreciation for the special problems faced by underdeveloped nations. You'll examine dozens of case histories that illustrate what works and doesn't work in the drive to increase economic growth. You'll also learn about intriguing examples of prosperity won or lost, including the Dutch tulip mania in 1637, the era of globalization that started in the 1850s and lasting through World War I, and Ukraine's economic missteps after the breakup of the Soviet Union. As a start on your own road to greater prosperity, take this step to invest in an unparalleled explanation of the prerequisites to achieve it.

    But the extreme right has been growing steadily in the US since the 1990s, with the rise of patriot militias; following 9/11, when conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black president of the country. Nurtured by a powerful right-wing media sector in radio, TV, and online, the far-right, Tea Party movement conservatives, and Republican activists found common ground in ‘Producerist’ ideology and ‘Constitutionalist’ interpretations of US law – an alternative America that is resurgent, even as it has been ignored by the political establishment and mainstream media. Investigative reporter David Neiwert has been tracking extremists for more than two decades, and here he provides a deeply reported and authoritative report on the background, mindset, and growth on the ground of far-right movements across the country. The product of years of reportage, and including the most in-depth investigation of Trump’s ties to far-right figures, this is a crucial book about one of the most disturbing sides of the US.