concerns. It is the underdeveloped issue of cultural concerns that I will
focus on in this book. I will not write about standardized testing or
school choice. Rather, I will focus on democratic (and cultural) issues as
they pertain to the school site in particular.

With this in mind, perhaps one of the largest reforms of the U.S. school
system will someday concern what in educational circles is called multi-
cultural or diversity education. Between the devastating rate of urban
dropouts ³ and the increasing numbers of minority immigrants into the
United States, much thought has been and will continue to be focused
on what counts as a fair and just education for so many millions of im-
migrant newcomers and other educationally deprived Americans. Not
enough thought, however, has gone into implementing programs to
equalize education for diverse groups, despite the noble efforts and mi-
nor successes of programs like Head Start. It is clear, especially after
reading Jonathan Kozol devastating book Savage Inequalities, that
American education is in dire straits. Clearly, then, one of the largest
problems facing the United States in general and education in particular
is how to build a school system that is just and fair and caring and nur-
turing as well as democratic to its large clientele. These are the major
issues within which critical social theory conceptualizes its work.

This will be a book about critical social theory and its ensuing philos-
ophies and practices, particularly critical pedagogy. But before we begin
with definitions, I would like in this introductory chapter to divert to
what I describe as my personal and public lives and thus make critical
theory and critical pedagogy more manageable in Chapter 2 and the sub-
sequent chapters, particularly Chapter 8. Intimately related to critical the-
ory is my coming to terms with my school years, my preservice teacher
education experiences, and some of the public's views on education. I
turn my attention to this.

I was born in Australia, and I lived for ten years in Israel and one year
in England. I have lived for twelve years in the United States (in the
Midwest, in Columbus, Ohio; in the South, in Greensboro, North Caro-
lina; in the West, in Orange, California; and now on the East Coast in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania). My past educational experiences as both a stu-
dent, student-teacher, and teacher have profoundly affected how I view
the role of schools and teachers within schools in particular. Because I
am so involved in the education field, I can't help but be attracted to the
specific news items about education that frequent the newspapers.

Newspapers report on former President Bush's America 2000 plan,
growing poverty levels and how they affect schools, the role of the econ-
omy and education, standardized tests, gender and minority issues, and
so on. All of these influence, in some way or another, how I view the
role of schools socially, culturally, and politically. Despite all the media
(both positive and negative), critical theorists view schools as inherently
unequal places of knowledge distribution that in a large part serve to

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