Publisher's Synopsis
According to Donaldo Macedo, an educational legacy exists that stifles critical thinking in favor of indoctrination and specialization. The educational system has lost sight of its responsibility to prepare students in the kind of broad, critical thinking necessary for responsible citizenship.;Challenging conservatives Allan Bloom, E.D. Hirsch, and others, Macedo shows why so-called common culture literacy is a form of dominant cultural reproduction that undermines independent thought and goes against the best interests of our students. In a wide-ranging argument, Macedo shows why cultural literacy cannot be restricted to the acquisition of Western heritage values, which sustain an ideology that systematically negates the cultural experiences of many members of society - not only minorities but also anyone who is poor or disenfranchised. The author brings in some of his own biography as a West African immigrant student who surmounted the barriers imposed by the world's most entrenched monolingual system of higher education. This book is testimony to the very idea that critical thinking and good education are not culturally or linguistically bounded.
