Pomson A, Schnoor R.
Back to School: Jewish Day School in the Lives of Adult Jews
. Wayne State University Press; 2008. Available from:
לקנייהBeyond the walls of their synagogues, Jewish adults are creating religious meaning in new and diverse ways in a range of unconventional sites. In Back to School, authors Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor argue that the Jewish day school serves as one such site by bringing adults and children together for education, meeting, study, and worship-like ceremonies. Pomson and Schnoor suggest that day school functions as a locus of Jewish identity akin to the Jewish streets or neighborhoods that existed in many major North American cities in the first half of the twentieth century.
Back to School began as an ethnographic study of the Paul Penna Downtown Jewish Day School (DJDS) in Toronto, a private, religiously pluralistic day school that balances its Jewish curriculum with general studies. Drawing on a longitudinal study at DJDS, and against the backdrop of a comparative study of two other Toronto day schools as well as four day schools from the U.S. Midwest, Pomson and Schnoor argue that when parents choose Jewish schools for their children they look for institutions that satisfy not only their children's academic and emotional needs but also their own social and personal concerns as Jewish adults. The authors found an uncommon degree of involvement and engagement on the part of the parents, as genuine friendships and camaraderie blossomed between parents, faculty, and administrators. In addition, the authors discovered that parents who considered themselves secular Jews were introduced to or reacquainted with the depth and meaning of Jewish tradition and rituals through observing or taking part in school activities.
Sitting on the cusp between the disciplines of education and the sociology of contemporary Jewish life, Back to School offers important policy implications for how Jewish day schools might begin to re-imagine their relationships with parents. Jewish parents, Jewish studies scholars, as well as researchers of educational and social trends will enjoy this evocative volume.
Silberman-Keller D, Bekerman Z, Giroux H, Burbules N eds.
Mirror Images: Popular Culture and Education
. Peter Lang Publishing Inc.; 2008. Available from:
לקנייה"Few books capture as clearly the critical place and influence of popular culture on education. Silberman-Keller, Bekerman, Giroux, and Burbules have launched a collaboration that helps educators understand the learning process outside the confines of classroom pedagogy but provides the conditions of possibility for improving schools. Its expert contributors travel through social experiences that no educator can take for granted any longer as extra-curricular. If schooling is education of the whole person then this book takes us one step closer to that transformation." —Zeus Leonardo, University of California, Berkeley
Bekerman Z, Kopelowitz E eds.
Cultural Education-Cultural Sustainability: Minority, Diaspora, Indigenous and Ethno-Religious Groups in Multicultural Societies
. Routledge; 2008. Available from:
לקנייהThis volume is a path-breaking contribution to the study of efforts of diaspora, indigenous, and minority groups, broadly defined, to use education (formal and informal) to sustain cultural continuity while grappling with the influences and demands of wider globalizing, nationalizing, or other homogenizing and assimilatory forces. Particular attention is given to groups that use educational elements other than second-language teaching alone in programs to sustain their particular cultural traditions. The focus of the book on cultural sustainability changes the nature of questions posed in multicultural education from those that address the opening of boundaries to issues of preserving boundaries in an open yet sustainable way.
As forced and elective immigration trends are changing the composition of societies and the educational systems within them -- bringing a rich diversity of cultural experience to the teaching/learning process -- diaspora, indigenous, and minority groups are looking more and more for ways to sustain their cultures in the context of wider socio-political influences. This volume is a first opportunity to consider critically multicultural efforts in dialogue with educational options that are culturally particularistic but at the same time tolerant.
Academics will find this an excellent reference book. Practitioners will draw inspiration in learning of others’ efforts to sustain cultures, and will engage in critical reflection on their own work vis-à-vis that of others. Teachers will realize they do not stand alone in their educational efforts and will uncover new strategies and methodologies through which to approach their work.