The article examines the enactment of culturally relevant progressivism on the part of the principal of the Social Justice School, a small urban public high school explicitly committed to democratic education. Drawing upon extensive interviews and field observations conducted over the course of an academic year by a teacher-researcher within the…

Given the way that student, teacher, principal, and school testing and accountability measures are currently leaning, it is understandable why a child's moral development sometimes gets less attention than her aptitude in algebra. Yet even with nearly all major accountability incentives heaped upon the tests in math and English, there are still…

Exile has its place. As an age-old human response to conflict, its potential value to the healthy maturation of students and the school community should not be discounted. Exile or ostracism goes by various names in school. Students are told: Move your desk. Leave the classroom and wait in the hall. Go to the office. Go to detention. You're…

As part of the Small Schools movement in Chicago Public Schools, a high school dedicated to African-centered education was chartered. The virtues of Ma'at and the Nguzo Saba, otherwise known as the seven principles of Kwanza, were the foundational principles of the school and were to be integrated into all of the practices and policies of the…

For millions of years, human beings evolved and then lived in small social groupings that were intergenerational, with simple divisions of labor, oriented to common tasks and values. It was a limited existence in many ways, but there was community and continuity. And now, very suddenly in evolutionary time, we have built the teeming cities and…