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IAP BOOK SERIES

Transforming Education for the Future

Humanity is facing unprecedented challenges. Critical issues, such as world conflicts, global warming, energy crises, and moral decay, if not dealt with, can bring a total breakdown of human civilization. We currently have all the tools to destroy our planet, either slowly by continuing to injure the physical environment or rapidly through nuclear warfare. We can annihilate not only our enemies but the whole human race and other species on Earth.

In the U.S. and many other countries, educational systems are bogged down by structural problems and old philosophies. Education is supposed to prepare citizens who have the ability, awareness, and wisdom to deal with crises and continually learn and grow, but it still operates on an almost purely mechanistic, rationalistic, capitalistic, and highly competitive paradigm.

The U.S. needs a new educational paradigm based on a different, far richer, more insightful understanding of human possibility. This paradigm must be strong enough to transform current educational thinking and practice. It must be creative and expansive enough to transform the world.

What kinds of schools and universities do we need to transform the world? To answer this, we need to address a number of other questions. For instance, what types of skills will people, both young and old, require in order to contribute to the common good? What can education do to motivate people toward cooperation and harmony? What is our deepest, most heartfelt hope for a compassionate human race, and how can education help manifest this hope? Can Enlightenment rationality, individualism, and rigor share a berth with wisdom, universality, and compassion in the education of the future? Can education develop a humanity that is not just intelligent but wise? Can education, which is often viewed as a very conservative cultural institution, become a means for transforming values, not just transmitting them?

PROPOSAL GUIDELINE

We are looking to publish books that:

• Are forward-looking and provide positive, transformative, and innovative ideas to propel education as an agent of social change for a peaceful, sustainable, and equitable world;

• Propose new paradigms for social and global changes that promote the integration of science and religion, and the unity of body, mind, and spirit;

• Address critical challenges that face humanity in areas such as peace, the environment, and social morality;

• Critically examine historical hierarchies of power and privilege around the world, including the hierarchy between humans and nature, and the structural inequalities they create, to provide us with the kind of clarity we need to imagine a more equitable, love-based future;

• Offer new ways of learning that educate wise and global citizens, and are based on ecological/interconnected frameworks.

How to Submit a Book Proposal:

Begin your proposal by explaining the overall objectives and significance of the book project in a detailed statement of purpose (1-3 pages). Please include info on:

• Who is/are the author(s)/editor(s)?
• If this is an edited volume, include a list of contributors/affiliations.
• Who is your audience for this book? (e.g., academic or professional, adoption potential, or reference work)?
• How do you expect readers to make use of this book?
• How does the book extend current knowledge in your field of study?
• How does the project explore previously unrecognized or infrequently considered topics in the literature?
• The length of the project
• Your schedule for delivery of the final draft

An outline of the book that provides a short narrative description of each chapter. For edited volumes, provide a list of the chapter titles or topics that will be covered as well as the names and backgrounds of authors (a couple of sentences).

Provide a sample chapter and curriculum vitae for the authors(s) or editor(s).

The proposal should be emailed to:
jinglin@umd.edu, millervw@appstate.edu, and amandajanefiore@gmail.com

BOOKS IN THIS SERIES