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We Want to Do More Than Survive

Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

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We Want to Do More Than Survive

By: Bettina Love
Narrated by: Misty Monroe
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Winner of the 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award

Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.

Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.

To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.
Education Philosophy Social Sciences Survival Urban Education Social Sciences Education
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I liked it all especially the need and urgent gap on teachers training in cultures. There is a line at the very beginning that grabbed my attention to why this matters: ". . .to remind you how worthless human being you are".

A love letter to the world of freedom in education

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