This edition of New Era - New Urgency: The Case for Repurposing Education from Lexington Books will prove of special interest to readers concerned with the issues relevant to how education and educational institutions can best prepare us for the on-coming and inevitable impacts of the physical, political, technological, economic, and cultural global changes -- especially those that will be generated by dramatic climate change and the advances of artificial intelligence. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, New Era - New Urgency: The Case for Repurposing Education is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, governmental, and college/university library Contemporary Educational Theory & Practice collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.

Midwest Book Review

What a fascinating read and a thoughtful recommendation for education in the United States and beyond… ensuring that education has a locally-driven purpose for all participants, especially students, teachers, administrators and parents. Authors Merlino and Pomeroy recount centuries of changed purposes in American education as well as issues that have bedeviled, and continue to weaken, educational success for many. Out of this history, the authors – active supporters of education here and abroad – come to a notable success in a foreign context and lead us to the possibilities that readers might take as their own.

James Hamos, former Senior Advisor to the Director, National Science Foundation

In New Era – New Urgency, F. Joseph Merlino and Deborah Pomeroy share their expansive understanding of the foundations of American education and their experience with creating educational programs for 21st Century teachers and learners. This book is logically organized and beautifully written. It takes the reader through the earliest years of American education and the various purposes of education as they evolved. The authors go on to identify ways in which those purposes have been corrupted, with interesting sections on the roles that wealth distribution and religion, among others, played out to bring about this corruption. Merlino and Pomeroy describe, in depth, their experiences in working with Egypt, Bosnia, and American schools, focused on STEM curriculum. This book makes a compelling case for changes that need to be made in America's education system and is a must read for education professionals who wish to eschew traditional methods of teaching that continue to pervade American schools.

Preston Feden, La Salle University

United in an effort steeped in academic practice and research methodologies, authors F. Joseph Merlino and Deborah Pomeroy untangle the decades long conundrum of deciphering what education is today, from whence it historically came, and how it should be adjusted to accommodate myriad social iterations and the constantly changing needs of its recipients. In working with international teaching professionals, interacting with thousands of students, testing, and retesting over an extended time frame, they dissect old standards and have reconstructed a vision of education for the new era, all the while recognizing the urgency that have perplexed so many for decades. New Era – New Urgency is a read that not only belongs on the bookshelves of every reforming educator, but one that presents ideas that set the bar significantly high to incite and direct future outcomes for needed change.

Gary A. Lauresen, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Policymakers, Educators, and the public would do well to understand and work to implement a new purpose-driven education described by the authors in New Era – New Urgency. What they describe here is not theoretical, they have developed and 'test-driven' this new vision for education in schools with students and teachers. An important contribution of this book is to understand more fully the changing purposes of American education in a nation lurching, painfully at times, toward “a more perfect union.”

Charles Coble, East Carolina University

This is an incredible book that shares the important work of transforming school systems to empower students with critical thinking. I learned a great deal about history, culture, and educational change.

Jo Boaler, Stanford University