Message from the Dean

There is little doubt that when historians look back at this time they will view it as a turning point in history rife with incredible challenges—the pandemic, misinformation, political divisiveness, racism, nationalism, massive movements of people, climate change and growing disparities in wealth. But they will also note advances in science and technology—in immunology, in knowledge sharing, in faceto-face communication over distances, in hybrid instruction and in space travel. While very significant though, advances in knowledge and technologies are only as good as the ends they serve.

Future generations will judge whether we steered towards human betterment or towards further human dissolution; towards social transformation or social transgression. Education, ethics, leadership and governance will all be implicated in their judgments along with the judicious use of knowledge and information—each affording choice and thereby demanding good judgment.

In this issue we highlight scholarship that recognizes and embraces schools and libraries as sites for the transformation of societies towards ideals of social justice, ethics, and democracy. It is here that the next generation will acquire the tools necessary for good judgment to steer rightly in the direction of human betterment and upliftment.

In this light, we present excerpts from a new and timely publication, Preparing and Sustaining Social Justice Educators, edited by Annamarie Francois, executive director of UCLA’s Center X, and Karen Hunter Quartz, faculty member and director, UCLA Center for Community Schooling. As they aptly observe “schools are the moral, political, and social centers of our democracy.” We also present Professor Robert Montoya’s work on a national library training program in Kosovo. Finally, we present excerpts from our accomplished faculty member whose works soundly resonate ideals of social justice and democracy. But here we do so by fateful circumstance rather than by explicit design.

While preparing this issue for publication, our most dear colleague and my dear friend and mentor, Mike Rose, passed away. While all deaths are untimely, this one felt particularly so as there were no serious indications of ill health. The loss was immense for all of us. His intellect along with his kindness made him a fond colleague who lifted spirits with his humor and light heartedness. His dedication to his craft in humility and without pretension and airs even in the midst of national recognition endeared him to many. As a reviewer of one of his books aptly put it: “He’s the real thing: a teacher, a writer, a one-time street kid who has lived the kind of life his students have lived.” He will very much be missed. As a tribute to him but also as pieces that celebrate schools as sites of social transformation, we include selections from his repertoire of works.

Drawing from 30 years of collective work in the Los Angeles community, and from the founding of Center X, Francois and Quartz provide a tapestry of challenging professional work that seeks to “disrupt educational inequality in urban communities.”

Their approach is grounded in research about deeper learning, community development, and school reform. As they state in their book, they are making “the case that high-quality public education relies on the recruitment, professional development, and retention of educators ready to navigate complex systemic and structural inequities to best serve vulnerable student populations.”

UCLA Center X is central to our school’s commitment to teacher education and professional development across the state, while the UCLA Center for Community Schooling is home to much of the work that is done in our two Community Schools, UCLA Community School, established in 2009, and Mann UCLA Community School in South Los Angeles. Francois and Quartz are joined by 27 other educators and researchers affiliated with UCLA telling the story of Center X and making the case for social justice education. Together they share the experience of Center X in hopes that it ignites the imagination about what is possible. We include here the Introduction of their book.

This issue also highlights the work that Rob Montoya, assistant professor in Information Studies and the new director of the California Rare Book School, is doing in Kosovo in support of establishing a national library training program in the country, as they recover from years of war. Montoya has worked with the University of Prishtina to create the first bachelor’s degree program in library science in the country, preparing for the project by interviewing librarians all over Kosovo, in all sectors of librarianship from school libraries, public libraries, and academic libraries.

Founded in Los Angeles in 2005, the California Rare Book School (CalRBS) is a non-degree education program dedicated to providing the knowledge and skills required by collectors and professionals working in all aspects of the library, special collection, archives, museums, and rare book community, as well as for students interested in entering the field of justice studies, library ethics, critical librarianship, and rare book conservation and preservation. The program offers workshops, lectures, classes, and certificates aimed at professionals and members of the public who care about the artifacts of the past, the documents of the present, and their potential to change the course of our future.

Professor Montoya looks forward to bringing his examinations of libraries as outposts for societal advancement and justice to his work at UCLA and its local community, with his creation of the new Library, Ethics and Justice Lab, which includes among its aims learning how to better serve specific populations of color in the local Los Angeles community.

Mike Rose joined the faculty at UCLA School of Education and Information Studies in 1994 having already published numerous works on central issues in education, including his highly praised Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared. His works often challenged prevailing narratives and national conversations that seemed to drown out subtleties and lived realities. They were an antidote to the wholesale, broad brush portrayals that denied the humanity and very real experiences of participants. With respect to Lives on the Boundary, a New York Times reviewer put it well: “Vividly written … tears apart all of society’s prejudices about the academic abilities of the underprivileged.”

He was at once master of literary technique but at the same time rigorous in his methods—thick description, triangulation, member checking, meticulous documentation, and reflexivity. In Possible Lives, for example, through literary imagination and ethnographic rigor he brought the vibrancy of classrooms and the teaching and learning within their walls to life. Equally importantly, in all his works on education he was a champion of the promise of quality, public education for all.

Included in these pages is an excerpt of Mike’s final work, “Reflections on the Public School and the Social Fabric” to appear in Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, edited by David C. Berliner and Carl Hermanns (New York: Teachers College Press, 2021). Here he examines education as an intricate human endeavor. In the excerpt, we witness the subtlety of his vision in his perspectives on education inequality in our society.

We also include an interview with Mike that was done around the time of the second publication of his The Mind at Work, a treatise on the intellectual accomplishments of the American worker. Diving deep into his personal experiences and immigrant family he tells us “I want[ed] to demonstrate the considerable cognitive demands of blue-collar and service work and what it takes to do such work well … we as a society tend to underestimate and undervalue the smarts involved in such work.”

The works included here embrace schools and libraries as centers of social transformation. As Francois and Quartz put it: “When we work to change schools we are working to change society.” Generations after this remarkable period in history we and those we educate will be judged. Did we turn rightly towards cherished human ideals or did we falter from lack of conviction, commitment and resolve? A study of exemplars such as those included here followed by choice and good judgment lie before us. Let us make choices and judgments that will be looked upon favorably by generations to come.

In unity, Tina

Christina Christie, Ph.D. UCLA Wasserman Dean & Professor of Education, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies