The contradictions of a critically democratic school

This chapter examines a public elementary school in the United States that is well known for its attempt at building and then defending a critically democratic and socially transformative education that seeks to challenge existing relations of dominance and subordination across a variety of differences. It illuminates how schools act as a site of constant struggle and compromise between different, at times contradictory, interests, agents, and ideologies. The chapter begins by presenting the historical and socio-political contexts to the establishment of the school and background to its bilingual, multicultural, and antiracist agenda. It examines the complex factors and dynamics in the concessions the school has made in response to these challenges, and considers how and why, even in this most antiracist of schools, issues of race and racism persist and cultural, racial, and class inequalities are reproduced.