Carole Edelsky: With Literacy and Justice for All: Rethinking the Social in Language and Education, 3rd edn.

Abstract

The third edition of Carole Edelsky’s text remains just as relevant for educational practitioners and language policy administrators today as when it was originally published some 15 years ago. While most of the text is the same (two new chapters have been added, as well as preand post-scripts in almost every chapter), the implications of this work have a new meaning in the present day. The ‘social’ aspect, referenced in the title, centers around the implications of second language and literacy learning in the social world. Recent social, political, and economic changes at both the global and local levels have made this focus even more important today. The ramifications of policy changes have affected students, teachers, and administrators, unfortunately not in positive ways. This text offers up a true picture of the educational landscape as it was and is, and suggestions on how to combat harmful policy with holistic pedagogy. Changes in this edition center on the recent political changes that are affecting education. Educational policy in the United States has undergone a dramatic shift, from being mainly an issue of local control to a federal one. With the implementation of education legislation entitled No Child Left Behind, the federal government has secured their grasp on educational policy, and its implications have been felt nationwide. Increasing pressure to produce, in the form of testing, has become the new focus of federal policy. As a result, teachers and students are deemed successful by their production of high test scores. Neo-liberalism is also at the heart of this current debate. Neo-liberalism is changing the face of education not only through a federal agenda, but also through a corporate agenda. As Edelsky writes, ‘‘It is not a test score gap, then, that accounts for the massive intrusion of the federal government into education but this need to control education to maintain corporate competitiveness in the global market’’ (5). Privatization of public schools is one area of neo-liberalism, currently affecting