Description
Book SynopsisWhat would schools and communities look like if the health and well-being of all our children were our highest priorities? More important than test scores, profits, or real estate values? What actions would we take if we wanted to guarantee that all our children were growing up with what they needed to be healthy, happy, and successfuland not just some of them?
The United States was once among the healthiest countries in the world. As of now, it is ranked no better than twenty-ninth. Those who bear the brunt of our worsening health are the poor, people of color, and, most of all, our children. All Children Are All Our Children situates our ongoing health crisis within the larger picture of inequality and the complex interplay of systems in the U.S. based on class, privilege, racism, sexism, and the ongoing tension between the ideals of democracy and the realities of corporate capitalism. Public education is caught in the middle of those tensions.
All Children A
Trade Review
“Accessibly written with sharp-as-nails political analysis, in All Children Are All Our Children, long-time teacher and education activist Doug Selwyn indicts the inhumanity of corporate education reform while righteously arguing that healthy schools start with healthy communities and healthy kids. If you are interested in understanding how to really fix our schools, read this book.” —Wayne Au, Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell and editor & author at Rethinking Schools
“Doug Selwyn’s All Children Are All Our Children offers insightful perspective on the current health of children and the public education system in the United States. This easy-to-read book provides historical perspective and offers advice to educators, parents, and lawmakers on how to put children's health at the center of the conversation. I found this book to be approachable and inspiring. Selwyn’s words reinforced to me the importance of establishing a classroom community on the values that I most want to instill in students: compassion, open-mindedness, perseverance, respect, and a sense of well-being. Building strong relationships between teachers, students, and families supports diverse and healthy young minds. High-stakes testing and corporate wealth have prevented a generation of students from thriving in school, and we as a society need to confront this issue head-on. This book asks parents, teachers, and lawmakers to take a close look at our ethics and to start beginning our conversations with the question, ‘how are the children?’” —Anna Marchefka, Teacher in Greenfield Public Schools
“In All Children Are All Our Children, Doug Selwyn asks us ‘What would it look like if we decided that the health and well-being of our children was our number one priority?’ The answer is our schools and education system, indeed our entire society, would be transformed. In the tradition of John Holt and Herbert Kohl, Selwyn draws on his five decades of teaching experience, conversations with students, parents, health care professionals, social workers, and educators, and a deep dive into the research literature as he constructs a devastating portrait of the well-being of American children. But this book is not about despair; rather Selwyn fashions hope for children, schools, and society with the message that the only education for social change is action to bring about that change, and he offers us multiple pathways to follow as we, step-by-step, transform ourselves and our society into one that makes the health and well-being of all children our first priority.” —E. Wayne Ross, Professor of Education at the University of British Columbia
“‘What is honored in a country shall be cultivated there.’ The wisdom of Plato is laid bare by Doug Selwyn as he tackles the intersections and complexities between what we say as a society and what we do. Our myth of rugged individualism, that ‘success’ is solely based on what one can accomplish on one’s own, permeates a societal attitude toward children and, by extension, parents and educators. Rather than acknowledging child-rearing and education as a collective responsibility, parents and teachers must work in the best interests of children against policies that hinder health, well-being, and happiness. Selwyn unmasks the gaps between rhetoric, meritocratic beliefs, and policies to help us see more clearly what it is we cultivate, so we may envision and actualize the society all our children deserve.” —Rosalie Romano, author of Forging an Educative Community and Hungry Minds in Hard Times
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements – Introduction – Defining Health – Inequality – Chronic Stress – Environmental Factors – Corporate Capitalism v. Democracy and the Common Good – The Purpose of Education – High Stakes Standardized Testing – Denying Our Children – What Can Schools Do? – It Takes a Village to Change a Village – Conclusion: What Will We Do? – Index.
