Towards a Theory and Practice of Teacher Cultural Politics : Continuing the Postmodern Debate

. . . In a series of insightful excursions through the institutional culture of schools and classrooms Kanpol provides us with a rich tapestry of experiences within which are found not only conformity, coercion, and alienation, but also hope, dignity, and an empowering pedagogy of the other. Most significantly, the practices that value cultural differences and that enhance the voice of those historically silenced and demeaned emerge out of the egalitarian commitments and struggles of teachers. . . . .In Kanpol's clear but simple formulation of similarity within difference' there is the vision of human relationships which honor cultural, linguistic, and historical distinctiveness, but which insist on the continuing vitality and viability of a common human vision and on the necessity of finding the common ground of political struggle. . . . - Svi Shapiro, From the Foreword