Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools

This book is a research based look at the ways American schools tend to discourage academic excellence in students from underrepresented groups. The book is an edited volume containing chapters from respected multicultural educators concerned with increasing academic access and opportunity among these underrepresented groups. By not focusing strictly on issues affecting Black and Latino/a students, Beyond Silenced Voices offers critiques that are relevant to a number of groups, include Asian, gay, and female students. Orfield and Lee's chapter on school segregation since Brown v. Board sets the tone for the book, exposing the reader to the critical multicultural framework developed throughout. Overall, this text is a good introduction to the ways educational policy segregates students, brings further advantages to already-privileged members of our society, and discourages many students from finding and using their voices. Finishing with several chapters that discuss ways educators and students can transform schools despite the limitations of American education policy, this text provides critical educators with theory and practice for setting an agenda for change. These finishing chapters are the highlight of the text and are the reason for the 4-star rating.

I took a class with one of the editors of this book, Lois Weis. It is an interesting, sometimes very depressing account of how schools can and cannot improve the lives of the children they educate. The title in of itself is revealing: the idea of a silenced voice, a voice (student) whose thoughts, feelings and intelligence will not be heard because of the exclusions and discriminations they faced in school. This usually focuses on public schools, with some private school issues. In all, I strongly recommend this book for people looking for a body of information on education since Brown v the Board of Education to contemporary issues like the aftermath of 9/11 on Arab-American students. For my class I was not required to read the whole thing, but I will because I realize there is so much more going on in the classroom than simply ABC's and 123's. It's all political and BS going on behind the scenes hindering people's education and promoting others.