Judicial Decisions and the Public Schools.
While the statute law governing B.C.'s public schools is familiar to a majority of its educators, there appears to be widespread uncertainty as to the content and relevance of judicial decisions, and also as to the ways in which the courts and various quasi-judicial bodies make the decisions. The major purpose of the research reported herein was to evaluate the extent and the significance of these decisions as they relate to public school operations in British Columbia. Scattered information concerning relevant decisions was gathered, organised and evaluated. In addition, a number of issues concerning the current and future impact of judicial decisions on school operations were brought into perspective. Major conclusions were: (1) judicial decisions do play a significant role in B.C. public school operations; (2) greater interest, knowledge and involvement on the part of educators is required.
The Bounded Politics of School Desegregation Litigation.
The courts, a dominant force in the creation of school desegregation policy, are commonly perceived as making decisions primarily legalistic in nature. In this article, David Kirp examines the evolution of Supreme Court doctrine since the Brown decision in 1954; the progression of specific desegregation cases through the trial courts; and the interchange between political institutions and the courts at the local level. His analysis reveals that the decision-making process in contemporary school desegregation cases is both a political and a constitutional event.
Unity Identity Text Self
Abstract Understanding the receptivity of literature, how one work admits many readers, begins with an analogy: unity is to text as identity is to self. Unity here means the way all a text’s features can be related through one central theme. Identity describes a person’s sameness within different behaviors as variations on one identity theme (Lichtenstein). To find unity or identity, however, the interpreter himself plays a behavioral variation on his identity theme. In interpreting, his identity re-creates itself as he shapes the text to match his characteristic defenses, fantasies, and coherences. Thus, what a poet says about fictional, political, or scientific texts expresses the same identity theme as the poems he writes. To understand reading, criticism, and any knowing or making in symbols, then, we need to let go the Cartesian craving for objectivity and accept the themes in ourselves with which we construe the world—including literary works.