Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest

This tenth-anniversary, second edition features eight new chapters, a new appendix, and a revised and updated original text. 

It is a  comprehensive update of the classic study that delivers both a passionate plea and strategies for teachers, parents, and community organizers to give working-class children the same type of empowering education and powerful literacy skills that the children of upper- and middle-class people receive.

It dares to define powerful literacy as a right of citizenship. Finn persuasively debunks the time-honored paradigm for teaching poor and working-class students. Our job, he argues, is not to help such students to become middle class and live middle-class lives—most don’t want that. Education rather should focus on a powerful literacy—a literacy with an attitude—that enables working-class and poor students to better understand, demand, and protect their civil, political, and social rights. 

Praise for the First Edition

“Finn’s writing is so personal, passionate, urgent, and he was speaking, not writing, it seemed, directly to me … I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about the failure of schools to educate all our citizens into a powerful democratic discourse.” — John M. Watkins, Anthropology and Education Quarterly

“Finn’s approach is creative and effective … [The book] is … very important and deserves to be read by teachers … by parents, and by concerned citizens.” — LACMF, Literacy across the CurriculuMedia Focus

“This book presents a clear account of the history of literacy which on the surface is familiar; however, the author’s ability to define, compare, and contrast empowering education/powerful literacy reframes issues and challenges all complacency. It demands evaluation of the status quo and commitment to rethinking schools, literacy definitions, and instructional procedures for children as well as training for preservice and inservice teachers. Mary Anne Doyle, University of Connecticut

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