Reading List for Education Month

South Carolina State Library celebrates lifelong learning during Education Month!

From the history of structural education to DIY knowledge, expand your mind with our materials and programs on all aspects of education. We support the continuous and equal access to information, wherever you are in your school journey!

Education Month Books

Cover of Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Bell Hooks

Hooks uses her decades of classroom experience to question traditional education and offer better alternatives. She makes a case for how multicultural learning and teaching benefits both students and teachers, giving everyone the full experience of interacting, applying, and understanding their newfound knowledge in relation to society as a whole.

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Cover of Defining Student Success: The Role of School and Culture

Defining Student Success: The Role of School and Culture

Lisa M. Nunn

By studying three public high schools in America, Nunn shows how different measures of student success shape their students’ specific definition and attitude towards personal academic outcomes. These microcosms of American values provide valuable insight into the nuances of community cultural beliefs about success, hard work, and intelligence, and the role those each play in upward mobility.

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Cover of Information Literacy and Soci@l Medi@: Empowered Student Engagement with the ACRL Framework

Information Literacy and Soci@l Medi@: Empowered Student Engagement with the ACRL Framework

Michele Santamaria and Nicole Pfannenstiel

Social media has become an inescapable part of digital information, and students need a unique flexibility to navigate it when looking for useable data. This book shows information literacy teachers how to incorporate these new techniques into their lessons on how to research on the web.  

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Cover of Rethinking Education and Poverty

Rethinking Education and Poverty

Edited by William G. Tierney

Scholars from around the world contribute their research on how education and poverty are linked. Many of their findings are surprising, and all reveal a much more complex, intertwined relationship that does not always reflect conventional thinking.

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Cover of Teaching Web Search Skills: Techniques and Strategies of Top Trainers

Teaching Web Search Skills: Techniques and Strategies of Top Trainers

Greg R. Notess

An academic reference librarian gives tips for how to showcase the best ways to find information on the internet. Notess has been teaching web search skills since 1991 and his latest book emphasizes the importance of going beyond the first page and evaluating sources before putting them to use.  

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Cover of Education, Justice, and Democracy

Education, Justice, and Democracy

Edited by Danielle S. Allen

The contributors to this anthology explore how education can help advance a democratic society by creating chances for equality and advancing justice through social mobility and cultivating individual talents. They also discuss how these goals can be achieved through the current system and possible changes that would make it better.

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Cover of African American Education: A Reference Handbook

African American Education: A Reference Handbook

Cynthia L. Jackson

This reference book collects data about the Black educational experience. From statistical analysis to personal anecdotes, the author demonstrates discusses how Black Americans have to navigate cultural and racial bias in the educational system and how that can be changed for the better of all students.

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Cover of The Public Purpose of Education and Schooling

The Public Purpose of Education and Schooling

John I. Goodlad and Timothy J. McMannon

These essays explore how important a public school system is to a civil society. Various authors shine lights on different aspects of formal education and why privatizing fixes to public problems just makes them worse. They argue for focusing on public schooling to build community equality and meaningful education to build informed citizens.

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Cover of School: The Story of American Public Education

School: The Story of American Public Education

David Tyack, Carl Kaestle, Diane Ravitch, James Anderson, and Larry Cuban

As a companion to the PBS series of the same name, this book takes us through the history of how the American public education system was formed. A number of education historians guide us across the early twentieth century to show how immigration, child labor laws, and industrial growth brought a surge of school attendance and new attention to a cohesive formalized schooling in the U.S. Then we follow the documentary through the fight for equal education from the 1950s and touch on current hot-button topics still being debated about our classrooms. This is a great guide to the PBS show or an excellent stand-alone historical read.

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Cover of A History of American Higher Education

A History of American Higher Education

John R. Thelin

Thelin’s book walks you through the entire history of college and universities in America. He covers the cultural and political issues that arose during each era, from class issues that sprung up from their very beginnings in the late 18th century to modern issues like adjunct labor and compensation for student athletes. The evolution of higher education reflects and influences American culture as a whole, shown here through a thorough exploration of both.

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Upcoming Event

Silver oyster shaped jewelrey on a wooden table.

Speaker at the Center: Silversmith Kaminer Haislip, "Charleston Silver, Past to Present"

August 7, 2025, 6:00 PM

Join us at the next installment of the Speaker at the Center series with Charleston silversmith Kaminer Haislip. Haislip's rice spoon was recently added to the Charleston Museum's collection and she has received a grant from SC Humanities to study silver techniques abroad. Kaminer will present a lecture titled Charleston Silver, Past to Present on the history of colonial Charleston silversmithing and how it relates to her contemporary silver designs.

This Week