J. M. Beach

This book examines the idea of educational accountability, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make schools better? Do business management theories and practices make organizations more effective? What if the most widely used management theories and assessment tools don’t work? What if educational accountability tools don’t actually measure what they’re supposed to? What if accountability data isn’t valid, or worse, what if it’s meaningless? What if administrators don’t know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can’t measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. How is a business-model of economic efficiency supposed to increase the competing, and perhaps mutually exclusive, ends of schooling, such as human development, student learning, personal satisfaction, social mobility, and economic growth? What if students don’t learn much in schools? What if schools were never designed to produce student learning? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.

This book examines the idea of educational accountability, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make schools better? Do business management theories and practices make organizations more effective? What if the most widely used management theories and assessment tools don’t work? What if educational accountability tools don’t actually measure what they’re supposed to? What if accountability data isn’t valid, or worse, what if it’s meaningless? What if administrators don’t know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can’t measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. How is a business-model of economic efficiency supposed to increase the competing, and perhaps mutually exclusive, ends of schooling, such as human development, student learning, personal satisfaction, social mobility, and economic growth? What if students don’t learn much in schools? What if schools were never designed to produce student learning? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.

This book examines the idea of educational accountability in higher education, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make colleges better? What if educational accountability tools don’t actually measure what they’re supposed to? What if accountability data isn’t valid, or worse, what if it’s meaningless? What if administrators don’t know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can’t measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. What if students don’t learn much in college? What if higher education was never designed to produce student learning? What if college doesn’t help most students, either personally or economically? What if higher education isn’t meritocratic, actually exacerbates inequality, and makes the lives of disadvantaged students even worse? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.

This book examines the idea of educational accountability in higher education, which has become a new secular gospel. But do accountability policies actually make colleges better? What if educational accountability tools don’t actually measure what they’re supposed to? What if accountability data isn’t valid, or worse, what if it’s meaningless? What if administrators don’t know how to use accountability tools or correctly analyze the problematic data these tools produce? What if we can’t measure, let alone accurately assess, what matters most with teaching or student learning. What if students don’t learn much in college? What if higher education was never designed to produce student learning? What if college doesn’t help most students, either personally or economically? What if higher education isn’t meritocratic, actually exacerbates inequality, and makes the lives of disadvantaged students even worse? This book will answer these questions with a wide, interdisciplinary range of the latest scientific research.

This book defines the concept and practices of literacy through a discussion of knowledge, information media, culture, subjectivity, science, communication, and politics. Examining the ways in which the spread of literacy and education have caused culture wars in pluralist societies since the 16th century, the author reviews an interdisciplinary array of scholarly literature to contend that science, and more broadly evidence-based inductive arguments, offer the only reliable source information, and the only peaceful solution to cultural conflict in the 21st century. With a focus on the multifaceted practice of literacy-as-communication as embedded within larger social and political processes, this book offers a comprehensive study of literacy through five core topics: knowledge, psychology, culture, science, and arguing over truth in pluralist democracies. The central thesis of the book argues that we require a new literacy that incorporates reading and writing with advanced cognitive and epistemological skills. Today’s citizens need to be able to understand the basic cognitive and cultural processes through which knowledge is created, and they need to know how to evaluate knowledge, peacefully debate knowledge, and productively use knowledge, for both personal decisions and public policy. How Do You Know? The Epistemological Foundations of 21st Century Literacy is an interdisciplinary study that will appeal to scholars across the sciences and humanities, especially those concerned with pedagogy and the science of learning.

"Lest all living memory of what happened on the beach that day, 11th June 1940, pass from the world without remark, allow me to recount for you the story of the sandcastle." {evacuated from London to the countryside to escape the coming Blitz, 13 of us made a break from the train and escaped to the seaside for the day. It should have been the greatest day out of our lives. And it was, right up until the moment it wasn't. 13 of us made it down onto the sand. Only 3 of us lived never to speak of that day upon the beach again. Until now.}

This book defines the concept and practices of literacy through a discussion of knowledge, information media, culture, subjectivity, science, communication, and politics. Examining the ways in which the spread of literacy and education have caused culture wars in pluralist societies since the 16th century, the author reviews an interdisciplinary array of scholarly literature to contend that science, and more broadly evidence-based inductive arguments, offer the only reliable source information, and the only peaceful solution to cultural conflict in the 21st century. With a focus on the multifaceted practice of literacy-as-communication as embedded within larger social and political processes, this book offers a comprehensive study of literacy through five core topics: knowledge, psychology, culture, science, and arguing over truth in pluralist democracies. The central thesis of the book argues that we require a new literacy that incorporates reading and writing with advanced cognitive and epistemological skills. Today’s citizens need to be able to understand the basic cognitive and cultural processes through which knowledge is created, and they need to know how to evaluate knowledge, peacefully debate knowledge, and productively use knowledge, for both personal decisions and public policy. How Do You Know? The Epistemological Foundations of 21st Century Literacy is an interdisciplinary study that will appeal to scholars across the sciences and humanities, especially those concerned with pedagogy and the science of learning.

Growing out of the mytho-poetic devices of oral cultures, specifically within ancient Greece, came a conceptual tradition of "poetics" - often a formulaic activity whereby an analytical definition of poetry would be put forth followed by a discussion of how poetry worked and why it was (or wasn't) important. The two most influential poetics of the ancient world were authored by two Greek conceptual thinkers writing in a tradition that would come to be known as "philosophy: " Plato (a student of Socrates) and Plato's brilliant student-successor Aristotle. This book is a collection of famous essays on the theory of poetry from ancient Greece to 19th century England.Meno, by PlatoIon, by PlatoSelections from The Republic, by PlatoChapter IIChapter IIIChapter XThe Poetics, by AristotleAn Apology for Poetry, by Philip SidneyTimber, by Ben JonsonEssays on Poetry, by William Wordsworth1. Of the Principles of Poetry & The 'Lyrical Ballads '2. Of Poetic Diction3. Poetry as a Study4. Of Poetry as Observation & Description5. Of 'The Excursion'Selections from Biographia Literaria, by Samuel Taylor ColeridgeA Defence of Poetry, by P. B. Shelley

Shelley took his place within the vatic history of mythopoetic bards and bore the Visionary legacy. He offered a simple "spark" of poetry to his audience while promising a raging fire would burn if the poetry was nurtured correctly. However, Shelley realized that most people cannot accept the poet's offering (for various reasons; ignoring, rejecting or misunderstanding) and they let that spark smolder into nothing. Shelley shouts into his written words, leaving his hard-earned knowledge of the human condition and his visionary plight for willing human ears. Shelley paints himself as the Visionary, sound and steady within a wisdom that understands the suffering beauty of the human condition, who sits as a "tranquil star" to burn as heavenly light. Shelley's hope is to guide humanity through the dark night of doubt and fear towards the possibility laying dormant within being human.This volume contains the first three volumes of Shelley's complete works of both poetry and prose, with an introduction by J. M. Beach.Volume I: Early PoemsVolume II: Later Poems & Plays Volume III: EssaysYou can find Shelley's collected translations in Volume IV, published separately.

This book analyzes education in South Korea. It presents a brief history of Korea and East Asian education. It also explores the dynamic relationship between the public and private spheres of education in South Korea. A case study of Korean English Preparatory Academy (KEPA) is used to examine the financial, social, and psychological costs of education in South Korea, as well as analyze one particular private academy that is profiting off of "education fever," which is a phrase that labels Korean's obsession with education and social status. Education is big business in South Korea, but whose interest does education serve: society, individuals, or private corporations? Ultimately, I conclude that education in South Korea is driven by a cultural preoccupation with social status and class, as well as by free-market capitalists seeking profit, and only marginally with the private economic returns of a post-secondary degree, let alone the holistic development of the individual. Education in South Korea is not about skill based learning nor is it about individual student development, and to that extent, I examine in the conclusion whether the Korean system of education is just, and whether it should be a model for the rest of the world to follow.

Can the U.S. keep its dominant economic position in the world economy with only 30% of its population holding bachelor’s degrees? If the majority of U.S. citizens lack a higher education, can the U.S. live up to its democratic principles and preserve its political institutions? These questions raise the critical issue of access to higher education, central to which are America’s open-access, low-cost community colleges that enroll around half of all first-time freshmen in the U.S. Can these institutions bridge the gap, and how might they do so? The answer is complicated by multiple missions—gateways to 4-year colleges, providers of occupational education, community services, and workforce development, as well as of basic skills instruction and remediation.To enable today’s administrators and policy makers to understand and contextualize the complexity of the present, this history describes and analyzes the ideological, social, and political motives that led to the creation of community colleges, and that have shaped their subsequent development. In doing so, it fills a large void in our knowledge of these institutions.The “junior college,” later renamed the “community college” in the 1960s and 1970s, was originally designed to limit access to higher education in the name of social efficiency. Subsequently leaders and communities tried to refashion this institution into a tool for increased social mobility, community organization, and regional economic development. Thus, community colleges were born of contradictions, and continue to be an enigma. This history examines the institutionalization process of the community college in the United States, casting light on how this educational institution was formed, for what purposes, and how has it evolved. It uncovers the historically conditioned rules, procedures, rituals, and ideas that ordered and defined the particular educational structure of these colleges; and focuses on the individuals, organizations, ideas, and the larger political economy that contributed to defining the community college’s educational missions, and have enabled or constrained this institution from enacting those missions. He also sets the history in the context of the contemporary debates about access and effectiveness, and traces how these colleges have responded to calls for accountability from the 1970s to the present.Community colleges hold immense promise if they can overcome their historical legacy and be re-institutionalized with unified missions, clear goals of educational success, and adequate financial resources. This book presents the history in all its complexity so that policy makers and practitioners might better understand the constraints of the past in an effort to realize the possibilities of the future.

Can the U.S. keep its dominant economic position in the world economy with only 30% of its population holding bachelor’s degrees? If the majority of U.S. citizens lack a higher education, can the U.S. live up to its democratic principles and preserve its political institutions? These questions raise the critical issue of access to higher education, central to which are America’s open-access, low-cost community colleges that enroll around half of all first-time freshmen in the U.S. Can these institutions bridge the gap, and how might they do so? The answer is complicated by multiple missions—gateways to 4-year colleges, providers of occupational education, community services, and workforce development, as well as of basic skills instruction and remediation.To enable today’s administrators and policy makers to understand and contextualize the complexity of the present, this history describes and analyzes the ideological, social, and political motives that led to the creation of community colleges, and that have shaped their subsequent development. In doing so, it fills a large void in our knowledge of these institutions.The “junior college,” later renamed the “community college” in the 1960s and 1970s, was originally designed to limit access to higher education in the name of social efficiency. Subsequently leaders and communities tried to refashion this institution into a tool for increased social mobility, community organization, and regional economic development. Thus, community colleges were born of contradictions, and continue to be an enigma. This history examines the institutionalization process of the community college in the United States, casting light on how this educational institution was formed, for what purposes, and how has it evolved. It uncovers the historically conditioned rules, procedures, rituals, and ideas that ordered and defined the particular educational structure of these colleges; and focuses on the individuals, organizations, ideas, and the larger political economy that contributed to defining the community college’s educational missions, and have enabled or constrained this institution from enacting those missions. He also sets the history in the context of the contemporary debates about access and effectiveness, and traces how these colleges have responded to calls for accountability from the 1970s to the present.Community colleges hold immense promise if they can overcome their historical legacy and be re-institutionalized with unified missions, clear goals of educational success, and adequate financial resources. This book presents the history in all its complexity so that policy makers and practitioners might better understand the constraints of the past in an effort to realize the possibilities of the future.

In Studies in Ideology, poet and theorist J.M. Beach delivers a comprehensive analysis of the history and theory of "ideology." The narrow concept of ideology has traditionally been lodged in the domain of Marxist political theory, but Beach reaches past Marxism to focus on the "wide" definition of ideology, which can be basically summarized as "all theory is ideological." Beach strays from the Marxist totalizing and determinist narratives to deliver a discussion of ideology as "process," which takes its lead from Gramsci and analyzes the intricate and complicated mechanisms of individual subject formation in relation to dominant/dominating social modes of meaning productions. Beach offers his theory of ideology in conjunction with an extensive reading of history and contemporary affairs and ends the book with a brief biographical sketch of his own intellectual maturation, which is imbedded within a daring and timely critique of Christianity.