Books
Early Childhood, Aging and the Life Cycle: Mapping Common Ground
“This soulful study invites readers into the remarkable course of life with the sophistications of temporality. These stories of learning are those of learning to live, told with grace, wit, honesty, and capacious involvement with the surprising idea that the personal, after all, is intersubjective.”
—Deborah P. Britzman, Distinguished Professor of Research, York University, Toronto, Canada
“This archive in the form of a memoir is threaded through the remarkable life of an important early childhood educator, curriculum theorist, and AIDS activist. Like an archive, like a classroom, this autobiography is ‘a pledge of responsibility to and for those who will follow.’ It is a pledge to which we owe allegiance.”
—William F. Pinar, Professor and Canada Research Chair, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
“Silin tells us early in this astute, artistically crafted book that he has not yet ‘reached the assessment of completion that has allowed authors like Philip Roth and Alice Munro to announce that they have given up their pens.’ To those of us in the field of early childhood education who have been eagerly reading his books for thirty years, Silin is our Roth, our Monro, which makes his continuing to write very welcome news indeed.”
—Joseph Tobin, Elizabeth Garrard Hall Professor of Early Childhood Education, University of Georgia, USA
“This is also a story particular to its time: haunted by the AIDS epidemic, funny and thoughtful around coming of age as a gay man just post Stonewall, and joining the movement of radical education that transformed schools and teaching.”
—Adrienne Harris, is Faculty and Supervisor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and author of Gender as Soft Assembly
—Deborah P. Britzman, Distinguished Professor of Research, York University, Toronto, Canada
“This archive in the form of a memoir is threaded through the remarkable life of an important early childhood educator, curriculum theorist, and AIDS activist. Like an archive, like a classroom, this autobiography is ‘a pledge of responsibility to and for those who will follow.’ It is a pledge to which we owe allegiance.”
—William F. Pinar, Professor and Canada Research Chair, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
“Silin tells us early in this astute, artistically crafted book that he has not yet ‘reached the assessment of completion that has allowed authors like Philip Roth and Alice Munro to announce that they have given up their pens.’ To those of us in the field of early childhood education who have been eagerly reading his books for thirty years, Silin is our Roth, our Monro, which makes his continuing to write very welcome news indeed.”
—Joseph Tobin, Elizabeth Garrard Hall Professor of Early Childhood Education, University of Georgia, USA
“This is also a story particular to its time: haunted by the AIDS epidemic, funny and thoughtful around coming of age as a gay man just post Stonewall, and joining the movement of radical education that transformed schools and teaching.”
—Adrienne Harris, is Faculty and Supervisor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and author of Gender as Soft Assembly
My Father’s Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents
“Jonathan Silin’s story is uniquely his own but it could be yours and mine. Precious human documents like this prepare us for what lies ahead. They teach and they heal.”
— Terrence McNally, author of Master Class
“Jonathan Silin offers a series of valuable reports from what might be called the country of the farewells, using his raw experience to explore important questions about childhood, parenting, privacy, control, mental health, old age, death and forgiveness. This is a rich, careful, hones book, both nakedly personal and coolly philosophical. I’ve never read anything quite like it.”
— Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters
“Rich with strange parallels between coping with young schoolchildren and the “frail elderly,” Silin’s conscientious analysis only makes the rocky decline of his two very real parents all the more moving. A wise, insightful book.”
— Andrew Holleran, author of The Beauty of Men
— Terrence McNally, author of Master Class
“Jonathan Silin offers a series of valuable reports from what might be called the country of the farewells, using his raw experience to explore important questions about childhood, parenting, privacy, control, mental health, old age, death and forgiveness. This is a rich, careful, hones book, both nakedly personal and coolly philosophical. I’ve never read anything quite like it.”
— Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters
“Rich with strange parallels between coping with young schoolchildren and the “frail elderly,” Silin’s conscientious analysis only makes the rocky decline of his two very real parents all the more moving. A wise, insightful book.”
— Andrew Holleran, author of The Beauty of Men
Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS
“This book is not for the meek, because it talks straight from the heart—and from an educated and serious heart. Argue, disagree, get angry—but don’t ignore what Jonathan Silin is saying.”
— Jonathan M. Mann, Harvard School of Public Health
“Brings together a lifetime of advocacy and action—for children, for human rights, for people with HIV/AIDS, for gay men and lesbians—into a seamless argument for social justice, fairness, and respect for all people.”
—William Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Silin has created a generous literary register that can comprehend the many languages of life: the language he has learned about the education of young children, language for what he has learned about love and sexuality as a gay man, language for what he has learned about life and death in the age of AIDS… He shows us how we culture ignorance in children and in each other by refusing to hear and respond to what they and we already know.”
—From the Foreword by Madeleine Grumet
“The importance of Silin’s message for educators cannot be overstated.”
—David M. Halperin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
— Jonathan M. Mann, Harvard School of Public Health
“Brings together a lifetime of advocacy and action—for children, for human rights, for people with HIV/AIDS, for gay men and lesbians—into a seamless argument for social justice, fairness, and respect for all people.”
—William Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Silin has created a generous literary register that can comprehend the many languages of life: the language he has learned about the education of young children, language for what he has learned about love and sexuality as a gay man, language for what he has learned about life and death in the age of AIDS… He shows us how we culture ignorance in children and in each other by refusing to hear and respond to what they and we already know.”
—From the Foreword by Madeleine Grumet
“The importance of Silin’s message for educators cannot be overstated.”
—David M. Halperin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Putting the Children First: The Changing Face of Newark’s Public Schools
Jonathan Silin and Carol Lippman, Editors
“Putting the Children First has compelling lessons for readers who care deeply about educating all children.”
—Marian Wright Edelman President, Children’s Defense Fund
“Urban education at its best and the redefinition of what it means to be from Newark.”
—From the Forward by Gloria Ladson-Billings
“What every pre- and in-service teacher, social worker, policymaker, parent, philanthropist, everyday concerned citizen, and activist needs to understand about the struggle—and possibilities— of transforming urban schools.”
— Michelle Fine, Coeditor of Construction Sites: Excavating Race, Class, and Gender Among Urban Youth
—Marian Wright Edelman President, Children’s Defense Fund
“Urban education at its best and the redefinition of what it means to be from Newark.”
—From the Forward by Gloria Ladson-Billings
“What every pre- and in-service teacher, social worker, policymaker, parent, philanthropist, everyday concerned citizen, and activist needs to understand about the struggle—and possibilities— of transforming urban schools.”
— Michelle Fine, Coeditor of Construction Sites: Excavating Race, Class, and Gender Among Urban Youth