A new book by Gerald Grant, Hannah Hammond Professor of Education and
Sociology Emeritus in Syracuse University's
School of Education, offers a compelling
study of urban social policy that combines field research and historical narrative in
lucid and engaging prose. The book, "Hope and Despair in the American City"
(Harvard University Press, 2009), presents an ambitious portrait-sometimes
disturbing, often inspiring-of two cities, Syracuse, N.Y., and Raleigh, N.C., that
exemplify the nation's greatest educational challenges, as well as a passionate
exploration of the potential for school reform that exists for America's urban schools
today.
In the book, Grant argues that the Raleigh community has benefited from a policy of
integration by social class that occurred when the city voluntarily merged with the
surrounding suburbs in 1976 to create the Wake County Public School System. He
contrasts this with developments in the Syracuse community during the same period.
Before coming to Syracuse, Grant was education editor and a writer on the national
staff of The Washington Post (1961-67), a Nieman Fellow (1967-68) and a
postdoctoral research fellow in the sociology department at Harvard University.
Under grants from the Carnegie Foundation, he coordinated a five-year study of
experimental colleges and reform movements published as "The Perpetual Dream:
Reform and Experiment in the American College" (with David Riesman, University
of Chicago Press, 1978), which won the Borden Award of the American Council on
Education.
Grant's "The World We Created at Hamilton High" (Harvard University Press,
1988) is a sociological history of an urban high school. His book "Teaching in
America: The Slow Revolution" (Harvard University Press, 1999), with Christine
Murray, won the Virginia and Warren Stone Prize.
He also has been a senior associate at the National Institute of Education, a Spencer
Fellow of the National Academy of Education, and a Fellow at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Additional information about this publication can be found at
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/GRAHOP.html?show=catalogcopy.
