Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School Hardcover – August 3, 2021 by Courtney E. Martin

Description

Author: Martin Courtney E.

Brand: Little, Brown and Company

Package Dimensions: 37x249x620

Number Of Pages: 400

Release Date: 03-08-2021

Details: Product Description “Vividly documenting school fund-raisers, contentious school board meetings, school drop offs, and back-to-school nights, Martin challenges preconceptions about American education and race relations today. Readers will be inspired and enlightened.” —Publisher’s Weekly“Provocative and personally searching” —San Francisco ChronicleA Shelf Awareness Best Books of 2021One mother’s story of enrolling her daughter in a local public school, and the surprising, necessary lessons she learned with her neighbors.From the time Courtney E. Martin strapped her daughter, Maya, to her chest for long walks, she was curious about Emerson Elementary, a public school down the street from her Oakland home. She learned that White families in their gentrifying neighborhood largely avoided the majority-Black, poorly-rated school. As she began asking why, a journey of a thousand moral miles began. Learning in Public is the story, not just Courtney’s journey, but a whole country’s. Many of us are newly awakened to the continuing racial injustice all around us, but unsure of how to go beyond hashtags and yard signs to be a part of transforming the country. Courtney discovers that her public school, the foundation of our fragile democracy, is a powerful place to dig deeper.   Courtney E. Martin examines her own fears, assumptions, and conversations with other moms and dads as they navigate school choice. A vivid portrait of integration’s virtues and complexities, and yes, the palpable joy of trying to live differently in a country re-making itself. Learning in Public might also set your family’s life on a different course forever.  Review A Lit Hub Nonfiction Books You Should Read this Summer  One of the Top Five Books I Want to Read This Year for CEO of TEDWomen Pat Mitchell”An honest, searching, and progressive book that will spark debate.”―Kirkus“Martin chronicles her efforts to narrow the space between her progressive principles and her behavior…a compelling account of the benefits of diverse, integrated schools.”―Conor P. Williams, Washington Post”In a vivid, meticulously-reported and unflinchingly honest way, Martin describes choosing a school for her eldest daughter in progressive Oakland and navigating both unconscious and explicit biases that force her to confront her privileges and fight against them. In the end, she concludes that the main barriers to true integration in public schools are well-meaning white mothers—without finger-pointing or absolving herself as a white savior.”―Oprah Daily“Martin brings to her perspective on her daughter’s education a self-reflection that goes well beyond her one daughter and their one family, or even their one school, placing instead the story of her white family in the racial history of the U.S. and the gross disparities seen in the American public education system. This reflection…is what allows Learning in Public to live up to its title.”―Shelf Awareness“This is the story of what school segregation, a nationally important issue, looks like through the lens of one family’s experience.” ―Lit Hub“Correcting the harmful legacies of racism in America is generational work. Learning in Public invites us to walk the long road of this process in beloved community. Courtney refuses to settle for the comfort and false certainty of simple answers and static moralizing. Instead, she insists on the painful discomfort and joyful awakening of transformation that’s possible when we live into the biggest questions we have through the most personal choices we make.” ―Mia Birdsong, author of How We Show Up“Writing with equal passion as a journalist and a mother, Courtney Martin interrogates the history and the moral contradictions of “elite parenting,” gentrification, and school choice. She lives the question of how to chart a new way forward with her daughter in their neighborhood. This is a kind of modeling our society needs – as openly messy as the work of remaking our world.”―Krista