This book takes a serious look at the erosion of democratic public life and public education, and offers directions for re-imagining, re-designing, and re-inventing the current system. Bridging the disciplines of film studies, postcolonial studies, curriculum theory, and politics, these essays suggest new possibilities for curriculum, and shed new light on what shape public education could take in coming decades.

Introduction, Dennis Carlson and Greg Dimitriadis Part I. Education and the New Cultural Terrain 1. The Globalization of Capitalism and the New Imperialism: Notes toward a Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy, Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur 2. Civil Society and Educational Publics: Possibilities and Problems, Kathleen Knight Abowitz 3. Extraordinary Conversations in Public Schools, Lois Weis and Michelle Fine 4. A Talk to Teachers: James Baldwin as Postcolonial Artist and Public Intellectual, Greg Dimitriadis and Cameron McCarthy 5. Promises to Keep, Finally? Academic Culture and the Dismissal of Popular Culture, John A. Weaver and Toby Daspit Part II. Reimagining Curriculum and Pedagogical Practice 6. Stan Douglas and the Aesthetic Critique of Urban Decline, Warren Crichlow 7. Screening Race, Norman Denzin 8. Troubling Heroes: Of Rosa Parks, Multicultural Education, and Critical Pedagogy, Dennis Carlson 9. The Symbolic Curriculum: Reading the Confederate Flag as a Southern Heritage Text, Susan L. Schramm-Pate and Dennis Carlson 10. Urban Education, Broadcast News, and Multicultural Spectatorship, Suellyn M. Henke 11. They Need Someone to Show Them Discipline: Preservice Teachers' Understandings and Expectations of Student (Re)presentations in Dangerous Minds , Deb Freedman Afterward: Schooling in Capitalist America: Theater of the Oppressor or the Oppressed? Carlos Alberto Torres