This article is a commentary on "Unwrapping the Suburban "Package Deal": Race, Class, and School Access," by Anna Rhodes and Siri Warkentien. Although guided by powerful ideals of equal opportunity, American schools are deeply unequal. As historians of education have taught, children of different racial, ethnic, and class…

This essay highlights a range of questions that arise when white suburban students engage urban neighborhoods of poverty and color in the United States. How can involvement in an "other" context move beyond "educational tourism"? The essay presents a pedagogical style that raises questions of the kind of socialized body one…

Research clearly shows that, in spite of large-scale social and political changes, women still bear the primary responsibility for housework. Research explaining the unequal division of domestic labor produces mixed results. The authors argue that the "new city" structure of the modern suburbs may be partially responsible for the tenacity of the…

The author discusses his book "Homeschool: An American History," and offers four primary impetuses for the current status of homeschooling as a political movement. First, he writes, social and political changes of the second half of the twentieth century partnered radical leftists who wanted nothing to do with conventional America and conventional…

Despite the promise of equal educational opportunities for all, most public schools in the townships of South Africa have remained poorly funded and thus have become dysfunctional. As a result most poor parents from townships have started to transfer their children to schools with better resources and education facilities in the suburban areas.…

"Civil defence pedagogies" normalise continuous emergency through educational channels such as school, community and adult education. Using critical whiteness studies, and critiques of white supremacy from critical race theory, as a conceptual base, the protection of whiteness, and particularly the white middle-class family, is considered to be…

Leila Christenbury is well known as a writer and researcher in English Education: her classic book "Making the Journey," [ED437654] now in its third edition, has been a guide to countless middle and high school language arts teachers. In her new book, this veteran teacher and teacher educator reveals what did and---more surprisingly---did not…

In the past fifteen years, the town of New Marshall has experienced major changes that have influenced the ways its residents view each other. Mexican immigration to New Marshall, a suburb of 30,000 located outside a large Eastern city, grew dramatically between 1990 and 2000. Where once Mexicans comprised less than 0.5% of the population, they…

Traces the evolution of a radical educational experiment, the Dalton Plan, in suburban Scarsdale, New York in the 1920s. The plan consisted of individualized instruction by contract. Although many problems had to be worked out, student scores and college achievement were excellent. (KC)

Japanese Americans in suburban Orange County, California, are widely dispersed geographically and have frequent opportunities to integrate totally into mainstream society. Nevertheless, ethnicity survives and flourishes for many. The mechanisms by which ethnicity is developed and maintained by Japanese Americans residing in predominantly white,…

The author details how a massive shift of people, jobs, and money has benefited the "sunbelt" cities of the South and West at the expense of the "frostbelt" cities of the Northeast and Midwest. Some implications for education are suggested. (Author/MLF)

Examines the New Jersey Supreme Court's involvement in and subsequent withdrawal from the issue of exclusionary zoning. Holds that despite arguments to the contrary, the courts are necessarily a political institution and should take an activist role in social issues that concern people's needs. (Author/GC)

Five books dealing with the suburbs are reviewed in this essay on suburbanization. Topics include demographic trends, suburban social life, government and social policy, and racial and economic integration. (Author/RLV)

This paper outlines major trends affecting both the nature of urban problems and the shape of much public interest problem-solving in the urban United States. Trends affecting cities and regions include the continued suburbanization of jobs, wealth, and political power; the evolution of a skill-intensive and networked global economy in which…

Argues that in order to understand the future of American cities one must be aware that people adapt to and manipulate city life by changing the categories by which major urban phenomena and processes are perceived and analyzed. Examines developments in urban industry, politics, and federal programs to demonstrate the argument. (Author/MJL)