Learning to Cross Divides: Examining Critical Multicultural and Bilingual Schools
By
Matthew Knoester & Assaf Meshulam
Forthcoming
Routledge: The Critical Social Thought Series
Inequalities are not primarily caused by schools, but they can be produced and reproduced within schools, or in contrast, their reproduction can be interrupted. Committed educators around the world work toward creating schools and educational experiences that attempt to interrupt the reproduction of forms of inequality from one generation to the next, albeit with mixed results. Their efforts are worthy of close examination.
In this book, we describe two schools in depth. One school, in Milwaukee Wisconsin, is a bilingual (Spanish and English) multicultural anti-racist school, we call La Escuela Azul. The other school, which we call the Salaam/Shalom School, is a bilingual (Arabic and Hebrew) and critical multicultural school located in Israel/Palestine. Both schools attempt to defy the odds in terms of racial and class segregation and inequalities prevailing in their respective settings and take the teaching of democracy and of critical thinking seriously.
Mandalas: works by students of the bilingual school in Beer Sheva
