Education and Democracy in an Age of Encounter: What Schools Must Do Now
A new book by Adam Strom
"Drawing in rich classroom experiences and decades of leadership in both education and immigration, Adam Strom provides a stirring vision for reform and concrete elements to improve genuine opportunities and understanding. Teachers, parents, school leaders, and legislators should pay heed!"
— Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard Law School
We live in a world defined by encounters with difference. Migration, demographic transformation, and digital connection have made pluralism the permanent condition of modern life — yet our schools, the institutions best positioned to prepare young people for it, have largely retreated from that responsibility.
Drawing on decades of research in contact theory, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and the science of belonging, Education and Democracy in an Age of Encounter makes the case that preparing young people to navigate difference isn't an add-on to education's mission. It is the mission.
From the liberatory tradition of Frederick Douglass to the democratic vision of John Dewey, from the laboratories of Gordon Allport to the classrooms of Gloria Ladson-Billings, Adam Strom traces what we know, what we have failed to do, and what schools — all of them — must do now.
Urgent, personal, and rigorously grounded, this book is for educators, school leaders, policymakers, and anyone who believes that how we prepare the next generation to live with one another is one of the defining challenges of our time.
About the Author
Adam Strom is co-founder and Executive Director of Re-Imagining Migration, a nonprofit that works to transform K-12 education into civic infrastructure for belonging. His work on identity, belonging, and immigration in schools spans more than three decades and two continents. Early in his career, he developed landmark educational resources on immigration, race, identity, human rights, and genocide, including Stories of Identity: Religion, Migration, and Belonging in a Changing World, What Do We Do with a Difference? France and the Debate over Headscarves in Schools, and Identity and Belonging in a Changing Great Britain. His work has been presented at leading universities, policy forums, and civic institutions, including Harvard Law School, the White House, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.