Hello Everyone,
I just wanted to alert you to a forthcoming book I've published with Springer titled Paulo Freire: Teaching for Freedom and Transformation. The book is in the early stages of production and should be in print by late Spring. I would like to thank publicly Shirley Steinberg for support of the book and generously agreeing to write its foreword. The book is co-authored by John Dale, University of Indianapolis. Here's the back cover blurp:

Hello Everyone,

A fellow blogger has posed the question of whether change under Obama will really occur. Let me begin by saying tremendous change has already occurred - we have an African American family in the White House, something that I really never thought I'd witness during my lifetime. That change alone is clearly something to celebrate and says something, quite fundamental I believe, about the ability of U.S. citizens to revinvent themselves. Indeed, as a Canadian I envy the excitement and passion for social justice that surrounds U.S. politics these days while on our domestic federal and provincial front we have a group of boring politicians whose thinking continues to be trapped inside neo-liberal economic policies and the perceived "right," a right grounded I'm not sure where, to enjoy basically unfettered access to our neighbour's markets to the south. It's a very pathetic and unimaginative period in Canadian politics.

I first met Joe in 2005 while I was Canada Research Chair in democratic learning at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He had recently accepted a Canada Research Chair in critical studies at McGill University. At the time, I was organizing a regular colloquium series in the department of education at Concordia and invited Joe to come speak about his work to faculty and students with the expectation he would decline my offer due to the extraordinary demands on his own time. Of course I was wrong. Not only did he accept my invitation to speak but took the necessary time to answer all questions about his work from those who joined us on that particularly frosty winter afternoon.

Schools and education are ideally situated to wrap students in ruling ideology by exposing them to the ideas, values and norms favoring the ruling class. Indeed, the development of public education corresponds with the rise of universal suffrage, and schools provided hegemonic interests with an effective means to control and manipulate public perspectives and political participation.