The Gated Society: Exploring Information Age Realities for Schools

by Everette W. Surgenor

Overview

The public education system has the capacity to slowly and quietly resist all attempts at systemic change or reform; this resistance has become even more tangible and definable over the past fifteen years as reforms to bring schools up-to-date are attempted and blocked by Industrial Age understandings driven by corporate, political, and financial needs. Surgenor identifies the intellectual, emotional, and organizational factors that keep North American education locked within the Industrial Age paradigm. Exploring the differences between the Industrial Age and Information Age paradigms, The Gated Society demonstrates how those differences would impact the practice, form, and function of education systems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781578869329
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/16/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Everette Surgenor is a consultant on community change processes and a retired superintendent of schools.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Learning in an Age of New Realities
Chapter 3 The Fat Lady Has Sung
Chapter 4 That Was Then—This Might Be Now
Chapter 5 Five Perspectives on Education
Chapter 6 We Are What We Were
Chapter 7 Why Change? Why Now?
Chapter 8 The Lessons to Be Learned
Chapter 9 The Industrial School System vs. the Information Age Learning System
Chapter 10 Planning to Plan: How to Create Systemic Change Consistent with Information Age Thinking
Chapter 11 Prior Learning: Assumptions, Perceptions, and Presumptions (Generalization One)
Chapter 12 Defining the Philosophical Thrust and Structure of the Learning Organization (Generalization Two)
Chapter 13 Understanding What Needs to Be Changed and Why (Generalization Two)
Chapter 14 Creating a Site-System Leadership Model (Generalization Two)
Chapter 15 A New Context for Collaboration, Leadership Teams, Learning, and Financial Management (Generalization Two)
Chapter 16 Community (Generalization Two)
Chapter 17 Technology (Generalization Two)
Chapter 18 Values/Ethics: Sustaining the Culture of Change (Generalization Two)
Chapter 19 Assessment/Evaluation (Generalization Two)
Chapter 20 A Paradigm Shift in Planning: Implementing the Knowledge-Based Planning Model (Generalization Three)
Chapter 21 Creating a New Ethos
Chapter 22 Imagine
Chapter 23 Enabling a Future

Editorial Reviews

This is a must-read for educators and community leaders. In The Gated Society, Everette Surgenor has threaded the needle on what we must do as a society to improve our educational systems to ensure the survival of our standard of living and our set of community values threatened by an age of unrelenting rapid change and globalization. We need to educate our young people about the why and how of change to prepare them to meet global challenges. As our technological edge in the world has dwindled, so has our confidence in our ability to meet the challenges facing us as a society. While there is no road map that guarantees success, the elements of successful change outlined in The Gated Society provide a cogent basis for questioning the efficacy of the form and function of the existing paradigm.

O. G. Kemprud

This is a must-read for every educational leader and board member; Surgenor identifies critical understandings necessary to accomplish real change in the school system.

Doug Player