Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement

Anyon makes an argument that educational reform should be a broad set of measures that involve the restructuring of the socioeconomic environment of urban and suburban schools. Anyon argues for some fundamental changes in neighborhood composition, intelligent infrastructure development, changing federal policies to generate wealth creation in urban neighborhoods, and, basically, the provision of greater access for the poor to new places to live in and jobs that pay acceptable salaries. Anyon backs up her arguments with many statistics. Overall, I found the evidence compelling. I did find that the argument is based on the idea that a justified wealth transfer should be part of education reform. Anyon successfully argues that this wealth transfer is justified because it is money that is being returned to the poor. She does acknowledge that such a solution may be unpalatable to the middle class, but stresses the importance of coalitions and social movements in moving the issue forward. I found myself agreeing with the general premise of the book, although the book's solution seems problematic given the current dominating ideology and the general inactivity of social groups. Anyon does point out these as problems, but nevertheless believes that social movements pick up activity in waves. The book's language is not too academic so it is definitely readable by the general public. On some pages there are so many statistics that it becomes a bit tedious, but the point is to use empirical evidence to back up the argument, so it is understandable that Anyon employs these to strengthen her arguments.

Radical Possibilities is a well written description of several of the current crises in our nation, focusing on public education. Prof. Anyon excels at placing the public school crisis in its appropriate and complex economic context. I recommend the book to the well informed, well read reader. The book is well written and clearly organized. The later chapters offer a hope for change including an emphasis on working with Community Based organizations. I teach in a graduate program in Multi lingual Multicultural Education at Calif. State University-Sacramento. We have the good fortune of working with hundreds of teachers, over two thirds Latino and/or Asian. We used this book for the first time this year in a course on Advocacy and Change in Education. The Anyon book served well along with my own book, Choosing Democracy: a Practical guide to Multicultural Education (2004) We live in a very changing time from the era of the active Civil Rights movement. Teachers, and other educational workers, need to understand the complex interactions between social science analysis of the communities and school reform and/or school renewal. The Anyon book does this very well. She introduces important economics data in an understandable manner. In most settings readers will need assistance and further explanations of the basic economic concepts and relationships. Duane Campbell www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com