Metropedagogy: Power, Justice, and the Urban Classroom

What might it mean to develop a rigorous, just, and practical urban education? Such a question takes on new importance in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, as urban educators find themselves besieged with test-driven, standardized curricula promoted in the name of fairness, educational excellence, and egalitarianism. Those who promote these standardized curricula fail to account for the unique situations and needs of particular urban students. When an urban curriculum is standardized, the students suffering from the effects of poverty, racial discrimination, and other problems are less likely to receive the specific pedagogical help they need to overcome the effects of such impediments. Such students have special needs. Teachers need the curricular freedom, the professional respect to address these special requirements. Metropedagogy, constructed as a critical pedagogy for urban education, addresses these concerns. This book will be very useful as a text in urban education at the graduate and the undergraduate level.