Education Revolution

Deborah Meier’s 2009 AERO conference keynote talk.  Visit www.educationrevolution.org/conference.html to find out more about this year’s conference!  Currently, we sell two of Deborah’s books Keeping School and Many Children Left Behind which are available for 50% off!  Visit www.educationrevolution.org/clearance.html to find out more.

Keynote Topic:

At the Heart of Democracy: Why it’s a hard idea to teach, and to learn.

Keynote Summary:

Winston Churchill once claimed democracy was absurd, until one considered the alternatives. It’s as hard to teach–and as counter-intuitive–as modern physics. But even more important. And yet we pay it little heed, even in schools that proclaim themselves “democracies.” What it might mean if we put the whole K-12 experience to the test of producing democrats would require a vast change in how we use those precious years.

Deborah Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, principal, director, founder, coalition builder, writer, board member and public advocate.

Meier began her teaching career as a kindergarten and Head Start teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools, before moving on to be the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary School, a New York City public high school in which more than 90% of the entering students went on to college. Serving predominantly low-income African-American and Latino students, the schools Ms. Meier has helped to create are highly regarded exemplars of educational reform.

Meier is currently on the faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education. Her books The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem(1995), Will Standards Save Public Education? (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002),Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind/i> (2004) are all published by Beacon Press.