Education and Democracy in an Age of Encounter: What Schools Must Do Now - Paperback

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 this world - have largely retreated from the responsibility to do so.

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 is not 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.