ARTICLES
VOICES INSIDE SCHOOLS
EDITOR'S REVIEW
How Children Learn the Meanings of Words
by Paul Bloom
-by Leslie Nabors Oláh
Lala Carr Steelman, Brian Powell, and Robert M. Carini
Teacher unions have been demonized by their critics and canonized by their advocates for years, but the actual relationship between teacher unions and educational performance has received very little empirical scrutiny. In this article, Lala Carr Steelman, Brian Powell, and Robert Carini examine the question, "Do teacher unions hinder educational performance?" Focusing on two of the best-known standardized tests, the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT), the authors examine whether interstate variation in standardized test performance is negatively linked to interstate variation in teacher unions. They find a significant and positive relationship: that is, the presence of teacher unions appears to be linked to stronger state performance on these exams. These findings challenge the position that teacher unions depress student academic performance, and in so doing invite further empirical scholarship on this topic from a range of academic disciplines. (pp.437-466)
Sandy Marie Anglás Grande
In this article, Sandy Marie Anglás Grande outlines the tensions between American Indian epistemology and critical pedagogy. She asserts that the deep structures of critical pedagogy fail to consider an Indigenous perspective. In arguing that American Indian scholars should reshape and reimagine critical pedagogy, Grande also calls for critical theorists to reexamine their epistemological foundations. Looking through these two lenses of critical theory and Indigenous scholarship, Grande begins to redefine concepts of democracy, identity, and social justice. (pp. 467-498)
Wendy Luttrell
In this article, Wendy Luttrell reflects on key decisions she made in her own research in order to illuminate reflexivity for other ethnographic researchers. Luttrell addresses the crisis of representation in ethnography, advocating that researchers name the tensions, contradictions, and power imbalances that they encounter in their work, rather than attempting to eliminatethem. The author reexamines her own study of working-class American women's life stories to make the case for what she terms "good enough" research methods. Through her own self-reflective lens, Luttrell describes several key realizations she made throughout the research process, and traces seven decisions she made as a result. (pp. 499-523)
Johanna Elena Hadden
In this article, Johanna Elena Hadden distinguishes between two very different ideas of teaching - a charter to educate and a mandate to train - through a retelling of her experience as a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher in Utah. On the one hand, Hadden asserts, some critical theorists suggest that teachers should be given a charter to educate in which they are encouraged, and expected, to challenge normative practices and policy. On the other hand, teachers are routinely given a mandate to train that requires them to follow administrative dictates without question or challenge. Hadden contends that by establishing and supporting a mandate to train, many school environments constrain teachers - through overt and hidden forms of control - from thinking and acting independently and, in turn, from training students to think and act independently. She further argues that the pressures created by administrative expectations frustrate teachers who may ultimately be forced to choose between compliance with pedagogical and curricular standards and leaving their teaching position. (pp. 524-537)
Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics and Spirituality Work
by Sharon D. Welch
New York: Routledge, 1999. 187 pp. $20.00 (paper).
The intriguing title of this book, Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics and Spirituality Work, hardly implies that a complex feminist, postmodern reading of multicultural education lies within its pages. Author Sharon D. Welch, a professor of religious studies and women's studies, has compiled a series of her essays that asks activists in a multicultural America to think about how to move "from the politics of protest to the very different challenges of building institutions" (p. xxi). Using a pragmatic approach, Welch takes both the Left and the Right to task. She tackles issues of power, chaos, and social change as she develops "a moral vocabulary" (p. xxiii) to use in naming new ways of acting that are based upon "a nondualistic understanding of good and evil" (p. xi). This concept of nondualism is at the heart of Welch's thesis of how to make ethics and spirituality work. Throughout the book, she uses metaphors from unusual sources to illustrate how contradictions can be held in a creative dynamic tension rather than understood dualistically as either-or oppositions. As befits a work grounded in multicultural education, Welch cites a wide range of sources - theologians, musicians, educators, poets, ethnographers, philosophers, cultural theorists, scholars, writers, feminists, womanists, mujeristas, lesbians, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinas, Europeans, Vietnamese, Whites, women, and men. In every chapter, Welch poses questions that have no definitive answers and challenges commonly held myths; these questions and myths call upon the reader to think about power in a frame of reference that encompasses chaos, ambiguity, improvisation, risk, difference, and change.
In the first chapter, "Virtuosity," Welch acknowledges the continuing existence of social inequality and injustice despite a vocabulary of progress used by those on the political Right. Asking "How do we respond to the persistence of injustice?" (p. 2), she begins to develop a metaphor to counter a self-righteous language of moral absolutes by drawing upon chaos theory and jazz. Describing jazz as a model of "virtuosity in the face of limits" (p. 21), she notes that it "emerges from the interplay of structure and improvisation, collectivity and individuality, tradition and innovation" (p. 21). She ends the chapter suggesting that by listening and playing off each other's strengths and limits - as in jazz- coalitions can make their work for justice "swing."
Next, Welch begins her critique of the Left, focusing on the women's movement, in a chapter titled "Frustration and Righteous Anger Do Not a Politics Make." She begins by describing the challenges that come with the complicated work of rebuilding institutions after a radical win against "patriarchal, authoritarian, racist, and elitist power structures" (p. 27). Welch notes that feminists, in claiming the truth of their point of view, held "delusions of our own relative innocence" (p. 27), not seeming to notice that their own relationships to power with regard to racism, class privilege, and homophobia were shaped by domination. After providing examples of problematic practices of viewing self and others, she cites a variety of sources, including African American conjure, Haitian Vodou, and the blues, that might serve as transformative guides toward developing qualities such as resilience, responsiveness, and balance. These essential elements of a "nondualistic spirituality" (p. 45) encompass failure and limitation as well as wisdom and courage, both within oneself and in others.
In the chapter titled "Learning to See Simultaneously Yet Differently," the reader senses a shift in focus. Moving from critique, Welch takes up the challenge of describing multicultural education. She organizes the chapter in three sections. She begins the first section by posing questions about connection - how to maintain connection as a nation and what the role of education is in the process. More questions follow: What does it mean to be an American? How much difference can a community hold? How do we make sense of our multiple communities and our multiple identities? Whose stories matter? The answers to questions about connection, she suggests, are found in connections - to people and nature of the past, present, and future. The second section is a discussion of ambiguity and difference, and the importance of learning "to see the world through multiple lenses" (p. 63). In the third section, Welch discusses the goals and purposes of multicultural education in terms of five models: teaching the exceptional and culturally different, the human relations approach, single-group studies, multicultural studies, and a social reconstructionist approach. Her conclusion suggests that through an integration of these models "a nondualistic understanding of self, group, and national identity" (p. 82) can be achieved.
Welch continues her focus on multicultural education in the chapter entitled "The Art of Ambiguity." She begins by describing two approaches commonly used in diversity training - one that heightens conflict through confrontation and one that attempts to create "safe space"- and then suggests a third way, that of growth through critique and disagreement. Seeing democracy as "intrinsically conflictual" (p. 87) and "a structure that has to be created anew in each generation" (p. 93), Welch suggests that by normalizing criticism through sharing different experiences and solving problems as a group, a "space for learning" (p. 107) from conflict can be created. She also proposes that, rather than "destroying" relationships, critique and conflict can enable the development of civility, respect, and group cohesion. The purpose of critique in multicultural education is not merely to denounce, but to change practices of oppression - to create new possibilities for action.
In the final chapter, "Ethics without Virtue," Welch uses the Holocaust as an example to discuss moral and political ambiguity - how it is fed by seeing others (whether the oppressor or the oppressed) as "fundamentally unlike us" (p. 124). She asserts that multicultural education offers a nondualistic logic of identity, one that allows the thought that we could be like those who are oppressed - or oppressors. The admission of this possibility, she maintains, can lead to the "perversely liberating" (p. 125) recognition that, in fact, we are the Other. Then compassion - rather than shame - can emerge. Welch further suggests that the way to live with ambiguity is simply to do the best we can and live with the consequences - and offers the blues as an expression of "a way of living with defeat and pain without succumbing to either cynicism or self-pity" (p. 125). In drawing the book and chapter to a close, Welch discusses the joy that is inherent in caring for others and the need for "decentism" - the mundane kind of daily decency that springs from the joy of being alive even while "feeling fully the limits and boundaries of life" (p. 135).
This is an optimistic and often engaging book. It does, indeed, provide a new vocabulary for thinking about power and political activism. However, the book sometimes seems as if it has been cobbled together from separate pieces - and, in fact, portions of most chapters have been previously published. Nevertheless, this volume fearlessly plunges into a turbulent sea of ideas and brings quite a few unique gems to the surface.
The audience for Sweet Dreams in America: Making Ethics and Spirituality Work is eclectic. Because it draws from education, theology, women's studies, and cultural studies, and covers multicultural education, ethics, social justice, and related topics, this is a book that may engender rich conversation among scholars, educators, and activists in many quarters.
C.S.S.
The Gender Politics of Educational Change
by Amanda Datnow.
London: Falmer Press, 1998. 161 pp. $24.95.
In The Gender Politics of Educational Change, Amanda Datnow illustrates the effect that gender politics can have on local debates over school reform. The author, a member of the Beyond Sorting and Stratification research team led by Jeannie Oakes and Amy Stuart Wells at the University of California at Los Angeles, uses data collected as part of that study (conducted in the early 1990s) to relate the stories of three schools whose reform trajectories were affected by gender politics. Each of these schools was in the midst of implementing a series of reforms that included detracking and other progressive practices.
The bulk of the book focuses on the reform process at Central High School (a pseudonym) where the "Idea Team," a female-dominated steering committee for reform, clashed with the school's self-proclaimed "Good Old Boys." These two groups quickly became political factions as restructuring began to be implemented at Central. Using an impressive and well-researched theoretical framework, Datnow explores the groups' identities and ideologies about schooling, demonstrating the competing nature of the groups' beliefs about education and children. The Idea Team perceived themselves as people in a position to "change the world," in the words of one team member, and accordingly invested substantial amounts of time not only in their teaching but also in rethinking the structure and culture of the school. Furthermore, members of the Idea Team saw all students as having the capacity to learn and student failure as the result of poor teaching. The Good Old Boys, on the other hand, saw teaching as an "eight [o'clock] to three [o'clock] job whose sole occupational purpose was to teach subject matter to students" (p. 50). As such, this group of teachers was reluctant to partake in any reform that forced them to rethink the role of teacher as imparter of knowledge. Because the Good Old Boys saw ability as innate and fixed, they were also averse to any restructuring proposal that included detracking.
In the early 1990s, the Idea Team developed a proposal for school restructuring and received grant money from the state to begin its implementation. The proposal included dividing the school into smaller units, detracking, changing the school calendar, and studying and implementing more effective forms of curriculum, assessment, technology, and professional development. The Good Old Boys opposed both the process of the proposal's development and its content. The means they used to defeat the restructuring initiative form the heart of the book. Instead of arguing the reforms on ideological grounds, which would have made sense given their differences with the Idea Team, the Good Old Boys launched a political attack on their opponents. By political, Datnow means that the strategies used by the Good Old Boys were meant to gain power by means of personal attacks and other egregious methods. The Good Old Boys purposefully avoided discussion of the relevant issues. The main strategy of the Good Old Boys' attack was to employ a sexist discourse that served to disempower the Idea Team. Within that strategy, the Good Old Boys had three substrategies. One, they portrayed the women teachers on the Idea Team as less committed to teaching than the Good Old Boys, saying these "dreamers," as they termed them, were in it for themselves, less financially reliant on their work than male teachers, and eager to take time off to raise families. Two, they degraded the reforms, calling them "women's work" because of the increased responsibilities teachers would have for the well-being of students. Finally, they made sexist jokes intended to mock the Idea Team's efforts in the community and with the school board. These jokes occasionally crossed the line to sexual harassment. When the book went to press, some members of the Idea Team were pursuing their claims of harassment in court.
The Good Old Boys' tactics were eventually successful, as they were able to gain the support of the superintendent and school board, both of which reflected the patriarchy that had historically defined the district. The superintendent effectively blocked the Idea Team's plans in two ways: he gave the Good Old Boys more airtime with him and the board and he enacted structural barriers (like canceling crucial collaborative planning time) that disabled the reforms. At the end of the second year of reform, the principal of Central resigned and a new, less reform-oriented principal was hired. The state then suspended the grant funding that had supported the reform effort. Though some vestiges of the reforms persisted within departments, the overall initiative eventually petered out.
One interesting twist to the story that Datnow identifies is that the Idea Team responded to the sexist discourse of the Good Old Boys with gendered language of their own, arguing that "women were uniquely poised to handle reform" (p. 98). Specifically, they argued that men were less well-suited for the sorts of reforms they were proposing because they were less adept at playing the role of caretaker than women and mothers, less apt to participate in a support network, and less creative in the classroom. Some of these arguments fed the Good Old Boys' arguments, allowing the Idea Team to be framed as good caretakers and mothers, but less competent teachers and professionals.
Lest the reader believe that the situation at Central High was anomalous, Datnow presents similar data from two other schools involved with the Beyond Sorting and Stratification Study: Explorer Middle School and Grant High School (also pseudonyms). In each of these schools, comparable phenomena occurred. Support for reform was divided largely along gender lines, and the strategies used to defeat reform included a sexist discourse similar to that employed by the Good Old Boys. The outcome at Explorer was a sharply divided school, with the two factions forming their own schools within the school, one dominated by male teachers and one by females. At Grant, the reform effort was defeated in a manner similar to what occurred at Central.
Datnow concludes the book with some important lessons for those involved in local school reform. First, "policy makers cannot assume that there is consensus among teachers over the goals for schooling, much less the goals for reform" (p. 134). Second, existing power relationships among teachers must be addressed if successful reform is to result. Third, reformers need to be careful that they do not create what Andy Hargreaves and colleagues have called an "innovative elite," an isolated group of teachers responsible for creating and implementing the reforms. Instead, there needs to be widespread support and responsibility for change.1 Fourth, reformers should strive for a "healthy balance between idealism and pragmatism" (p. 135). And, finally, policymakers need to weigh carefully the question of what sort of reform strategy - incremental or radical - best suits the particular setting.
The Gender Politics of Educational Change will appeal to both researchers and practitioners. The book's theoretical framework offers researchers a new lens through which to look at school reform initiatives. Practitioners will benefit from the careful documentation of a school's culture and will likely see aspects of their own institutions in this portrait. Furthermore, the lessons for reformers are solid and born out of the research.
A.H.C.
1
Andy Hargreaves, Lorna Earl, and Jim Ryan, Schooling for Change: Reinventing Education for Early Adolescents (London: Falmer Press, 1996).
The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters
edited by Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. 369 pp. $15.95 (paper).
All prejudices, whether of race, sect or sex, class pride and caste distinctions are the belittling inheritance and badge of snobs and prigs. (p. 105)
These words were written in the 1890s by Anna Julia Cooper, a Black feminist educator, scholar, and activist, who was born a slave in North Carolina and died more than one hundred years later in Washington, DC. In The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, editors Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan bring together a selection of Cooper's writings - enhanced by their commentaries - that reveal a complex thinker whose ideas about race, gender, and class, written in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, ring true and clear in the twenty-first. One of the first to write about the unique position of the woman of color - "confronted by both a woman question and a race problem" (p. 112) - Cooper also promoted the idea that the Black woman's particular perspective on society was worthy of attention.
The introductory chapter of the book, an essay by Lemert that blends biographical detail with theoretical analysis, gives the reader a solid historical and conceptual context in which to read Cooper's own words. As the subtitle indicates, the volume includes a reprint of A Voice from the South - Cooper's best-known work, first published in 1892. This is presented in two parts: "The Colored Woman's Office" and "Race and Culture." The first part is focused on the "hitherto voiceless Black Woman of America" (p. 51). One chapter, "Womanhood: The Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race," is the text of a speech read before an audience of Black male clergy that posits the moral superiority of the Black woman. Another chapter discusses the common oppression of women and the colored races who are "crushed under the iron heel of Anglo-Saxon power and selfishness" (p. 108). The other chapters in the first part treat the status of women in general and in higher education in particular. In the second part, Cooper looks at race and culture from a broader perspective in thought-provoking essays, such as "Has America a Race Problem? If So, How Can It Best Be Solved?" and "What Are We Worth?"
The remaining three sections of the book include essays, letters, and papers - some of which have never before appeared in print - that span the wide range of Cooper's thought. Section three contains her writings on "Feminism, Social Service, Education, and Race Politics." The next section contains chapters translated from her doctoral thesis on French attitudes toward slavery during the French Revolution (which she wrote and defended at the Sorbonne at the age of sixty-six); Cooper's notes from her oral defense of the thesis make up another chapter. The final section includes letters and memoirs reflecting on her life, and a chronology. An editorial commentary introduces each section and each chapter within each section; these notes serve to place the writings in historical context and provide background details.
Lemert's introductory chapter depicts Cooper as forthright and self-assured, yet complex, like her writings. He notes that "to understand Cooper is to come face-to-face with a woman who lived with heroic dignity while refusing all along to be exactly what others would have her be" (p. 3). After just two years of marriage in her early twenties, she lived the rest of her long life as a widow and later as a single parent to seven foster children - with five of them coming to live with her when she was in her fifties. Her life was "centered deeply in the virtues of home, religion, and proper public conduct" (p. 4). A consummate teacher, Cooper retired after forty years of teaching to run a college for working adults - sometimes holding classes in her home. Yet, her public image was ambiguous. During her life, she was not recognized as the public intellectual that her writings reveal her to be. She apparently sought neither celebrity nor notoriety, yet she was involved in controversy, notably during her tenure at Washington, DC's famous "colored" M Street High School. Described as "a brilliant teacher and an effective school leader" (p. 9), Cooper served as principal there from 1901 to 1906, building a classical curriculum that was solid enough for its graduates to be accepted to elite White colleges (including Harvard). However, she was dismissed from this position, apparently because she did not adhere to the prevailing ideology of racial uplift through industrial education rather than intellectual achievement, as espoused by Booker T. Washington, who was then the most powerful Black spokesperson in the nation. After a five-year stint teaching at the university level, Cooper returned to M Street High School and taught for nearly twenty more years. While she did not achieve the fame of contemporaries like W. E. B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell, Cooper's achievements were notable: her scholarly work in the French language at Columbia University and the Sorbonne, her life dedicated to teaching and service, and the many speeches and writings that illustrate the moral force of her social criticism regarding prejudice based on gender, race, and class.
Cooper has been criticized for her flowery literary style and use of allusions that would be unfamiliar to many of the poor and working-class Black people for whom she spent most of her life speaking and working. Some have found her too religious, too solitary, or too caught up in the image of true womanhood. Politically, her ideas may not always come across as progressive, yet she is viewed as "a self-conscious social critic of internal colonization" (p. 40).
However one may perceive Anna Julia Cooper - and readers will certainly be challenged to draw their own conclusions - Lemert and Bhan are to be commended for bringing her important work and clearly articulated ideas to a contemporary audience. Having access to these primary sources might motivate further investigation of her biography, to flesh out the intriguing person behind the words. The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper will surely be an instructive and engaging read for those interested in African American educational history or feminist philosophy, as well as for those who enjoy reading astute observations on race, gender, and class in society.
C.S.S.
Myths and Realities: Best Practices for Language Minority Students
by Katherine Davies Samway and Denise McKeown.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999. 127 pp. $13.00 (paper).
In Myths and Realities: Best Practices for Language Minority Students, authors Katherine Davies Samway and Denise McKeown offer a user-friendly guide to key issues concerning the education of language-minority students, or students from homes where a language other than English is spoken. As the title suggests, the book is designed to counter many of the prevailing myths that abound in this area of education with a discussion of the "realities" - in other words, basic research findings, actual program practices, and current legislative requirements for educating English-language learners.
Many of the myths challenged in this book - for example, "younger children are more effective language learners than are older learners" (p. 20) - would be viewed as predictable by teachers, administrators, and researchers who have extensive experience in language-minority education. As long-time teacher trainers, Samway and McKeown wrote their book not for seasoned language-minority educators, but for an audience of educators "who are not specially trained to teach language minority and limited English proficient students" (p. xiii). With this book, the authors hope to provide these educators with a basic understanding of the issues relevant to educating language-minority students.
The nine chapters in Myths and Realities cover a wide range of topics on language-minority education. These include the demographic characteristics of the current limited-English-proficient student population; native-language instruction; school-based practices related to program design, enrollment, placement, and assessment; the professional development of language educators; and the involvement of linguistic-minority parents and communities in schools. Each chapter follows a similar format: a myth is presented, followed by a statement of counterargument, and then an overview of relevant research or literature. Informative tables and figures are incorporated throughout the book; for example, a table summarizing legal decisions (pp. 30-31) helps readers appreciate an important chronology of events that influenced the education of language-minority students. The book also includes a glossary of acronyms and vocabulary commonly used in the language-minority education field. In addition, the book contains a comprehensive list of national organizations, research centers, professional teacher associations, advocacy groups, and local and state educational organizations that teachers will find invaluable.
One particularly unique feature of Myths and Realities is the use of "vignettes" in each chapter designed to capture "a more realistic, day-to-day view of how things really operate in schools" (p. xiii). These vignettes take the form of short dialogues among teachers or school administrators (e.g., a faculty meeting conversation in which the teachers discuss the progress of their language-minority students; see pp. 35-36), descriptive accounts that illustrate school policies or program decisions (e.g., the hiring of bilingual faculty and staff in response to increasing numbers of native Spanish-speaking students; see pp. 92-93), or profiles of learner experiences (e.g., a Vietnamese seventh grader whose English learning difficulties were related to a significant hearing loss that was not diagnosed for her first two years of schooling in the United States; see pp. 55-56). While these vignettes succeed in grounding each chapter in the lived experiences of teachers, administrators, and students, they would have been more useful if the authors had provided some guiding questions to help the reader think more deeply about the myths discussed in the chapter. For example, a vignette on placement of language-minority students (ch. 4) introduces two Latino high school students, Carlos and Francisca, who both demonstrated strong academic potential but were never placed in academically challenging classes. A few guiding questions (for example, What action steps would you recommend to this district so that placement mistakes such as these are not repeated?) would have helped the reader actively expand on the ideas presented in this chapter.
Myths and Realities is an important book for educators to read and discuss with their colleagues. In addition to its intended audience, the book represents a must-read for parents and legislators who want to evaluate choices and make informed decisions about the education of language-minority students.
M.G.S.
Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope
by Jonathan Kozol.
New York: Crown, 2000. 388 pp. $25.00.
Rather than attempting yet another broad indictment of society's indifference to the state of inner-city schools or the ravages of poverty and violence on young Americans, in Ordinary Resurrections Jonathan Kozol has written a lyrical portrait of children on the verge of innocence. The anger and indignation that so clearly marked his early books has been tempered by experience, and perhaps a certain amount of disillusionment. His pace has slowed, his attention now wanders; his focus has shifted from the immediate goal of exposure and elucidation of social evils to a gentle contemplation of the power of spirituality and the resilience of youth. Perhaps unintentionally, he has also penned an intensely personal and moving account of his own attempt to come to terms with the apparent inescapability of the social, educational, and political inequalities that he has fought against for so long.
Kozol does not journey from school to school anymore. Age, concern for his own ailing parents, and asthma - an affliction he shares with many of his young friends - make travel and exploration increasingly difficult. The majority of his time and effort is spent at one particular church, St. Ann's in the South Bronx, where he attends services, teaches in the after-school program, talks with the priest, and engages children in conversations about God, life, love, and loss. Occasionally he pays a visit to a classroom or a school, but there is much less emphasis on the specific details of educational disparity than in many of his other works. Instead, he deliberately and methodically looks for the good about him. He shows children learning despite their surroundings, teachers who are committed and intense advocates of their students, and a warm and supportive environment at St. Ann's, where parents, the priest, other helpful adults, and the children form a mutually beneficial and loving community from which they can all draw strength.
This is not to say that this is an apolitical or entirely optimistic book. While it concentrates on resistance and buoyancy, there are moments when Kozol's tone becomes either hard and unforgiving or simply anguished. His outrage at the dumping of waste material in residential neighborhoods, where significant numbers of children suffer from bronchial problems, is vehement. His dismissal of the assertion that money makes no difference in the quality of schooling is acerbic. And his despair when speaking of children discussing their regular trips to visit their fathers, brothers, and uncles in state penitentiaries is palpable. In this sense, many of the themes he plays are reminiscent of those from his earlier books, and they lose none of their power here.
Nonetheless, Ordinary Resurrections is generally a tale of triumph over tragedy. The lilting voices of the children are authentic and sincere, and Kozol's love and respect for them is warmly apparent. Anyone looking for a ray of light in an otherwise dismal sky would do well to listen to their conversations for a while. After all, as Kozol writes, we all "look continually for reasons to be hopeful. [We] just want them to be genuine" (p. 155).
L.N.
You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys
edited by Betsy Franco.
Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2000. 128 pp. $14.99.
You Hear Me? is a rousing anthology of poems, essays, and stories written by young men aged twelve through twenty. In the preface to the book, editor Betsy Franco states, "My philosophy has been that people should speak for themselves" (p. xi). Abiding by this principle, Franco presents the young men's writing without additional commentaries. This approach of letting the poems and stories stand for themselves gives the reader a glimpse into the experiences of teenage boys of varied ethnic backgrounds living throughout the United States, as expressed through the boys' own words rather than interpreted by an adult. The authors were recruited by various means. Some were personally invited to submit written pieces, while others responded to solicitations placed in creative writing journals and on the Internet, and invitations given to writing projects in three cities.
Whether the teenage authors contributed one or several pieces of writing, each helps to enlighten readers of this anthology. The writings are cogent representations of the reality that adolescent boys encounter. From the first poem, Quantedius Hall's powerful "Time Somebody Told Me," to the last, dr's valiant untitled poem, the voices of these young men can be heard clearly. The authors reveal themselves to be sons, fathers, friends, and lovers. They write with refreshing frankness and, at times, explicit language about varied themes that include love, pain, sports, drugs, school, sexuality, death, difference, and racism.
This book demonstrates the possibilities of individual support and writing programs that encourage individuals in their teens - years that are full of challenges and rich with experience - to express themselves through writing. A wide range of readers will learn from the worlds of teenage boys as portrayed in this anthology. Parents, counselors, administrators, and teachers should take this opportunity to hear the voices of teenage boys revealing what is important to them, their trials, and their triumphs. In addition, these writers speak to each other and to other teenagers who can discover what experiences they share and take steps toward understanding their differences.
A.M.