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The Soft Revolution: A Student Handbook for Turning Schools Around
The Soft Revolution A Student Handbook for Turning Schools Around Author:Neil Postman, Charles Weingartner "If fundamental change in education is to come, its basic agents will be students. And this is an extraordinarily fertile seeding ground of ideas for them - and for anyone else who doesn't want to be left behind." -Nat Hentoff — "A book of major importance... The Soft Revolution is a memorable and powerful concept, the best I have yet heard for d... more »irecting student discontent into constructive channels." -Ronald Gross, Editor, Radical School Reform
The students are the schools. The students have finally begun to realize it, and to take action to make their schools more responsive to their needs. When they succeed, a soft revolution has happened.
The ways it can happen are presented here, in a book that is a grabbag of strategies for students from 15 to 25 who want change without violence, who want to turn the high schools and colleges around without destroying either society or themselves.
The authors' basic metaphor is judo, used not only to defend the self against the system, but to turn the strength of the system against itself. The Soft Revolution offers a variety of devices--from jokes and maxims to models and case studies--through which peaceful and positive change can be achieved.
A central assumption of this book is that you can't stage a successful revolution without allies, those in the world of education want the curricula, the policies, and the power structure to be truly democratic.« less