Abstract
With the current emphasis on standardization in the nations' public schools, the pressures placed on teachers and schools through the accountability mechanism of No Child Left Behind, and post-9/11 sensitivity to and fear of trends in education (such as multicultural education) that are often perceived as contributing to strife and fragmentation of a “common” American way of life, Rasheed's book provides a timely and insightful contribution to the conversation about the purposes of schooling, the ways in which curriculum should be grounded, and what a meaningful curriculum, as understood through Maxine Greene's framework of a curriculum of action could mean for our times. By rigorously drawing out the existentialist philosophical underpinnings, as it specifically relates to the concept of freedom, in Maxine Greene's (1967, 1978, 1988, 1995) discourse on curriculum, Rasheed provides a compelling justification for the oft-beleaguered incorporation of multiple perspectives within the school curriculum. Further, by contextualizing Greene's work through philosophers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Paulo Freire, Hannah Arendt, and curriculum theorists such as Madeline Grumet, William Pinar, and Max Van Manen, Rasheed's book is singular in that it provides a comprehensive genealogical synthesis of the concepts and ideas that inform Greene's works, such as Dialectic of Freedom and “In Search of a Critical Pedagogy.”