English Education - Volume 31, Issue 2, 1999

Reflects on the process of standards writing conducted by the National of Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, from both an insider and an outsider perspective. Reflects on the larger forces at play and the deeper issues which derailed the standards effort and which “produced standards that no one has much good to say for.”

Describes an upper-division English course called “The Rhetoric of AIDS,” focusing on learning to read the cultural discourses of science, medicine, government, public policy, sexuality, and social justice. Discusses classroom discussions, teaching collectives, collective educational projects for the rest of campus, and community-service projects, all within a framework of scholarly inquiry.

Discusses accomplishments of students in Miami Middle School and High School in northeastern Oklahoma, who with the help of teachers are linking their lived experience, school-based learning, and new-found activism through the medium of a service-learning project. Discusses the history of Tar Creek, now designated as the nation’s worst hazardous-waste site, where these students live.

Discusses disciplinary actions against the principal of a small, suburban elementary school in Westchester County, New York, from several vantage points: the legal story, the whole–language story, the leadership story, and the school in the community story. Discusses the struggle of public schools both to constitute and to relate to the policies and lived practices of a democracy.

Available in print version only.