Gustavo E. Fischman

Teachers, Globalization, and Hope: Beyond the Narrative of Redemption

An experienced teacher in her midforties once said in class, ‘‘teachers, specially those working in public schools are always guilty. If the economy is bad the argument often goes: we are not teaching important basic skills; and if the economy is booming, the most likely argument is: we are not doing enough to teach the highperformance technological skills, the market needs to compete in the global world. No matter what, we cannot win.’’ Unknowingly, this teacher was expressing an idea similar to what Sigmund Freud and Immanuel Kant pointed out almost one hundred years earlier.

Book ReviewDistant Alliances: Promoting Education for Girls and Women in Latin Americaedited by Regina Cortina and Nelly P. Stromquist. New York: Routledge‐Falmer, 2000. 316 pp.

A Grain of Sand: Nature’s Secret Wonders (Voyageur Press, 2008, 112 pages) by Gary Greenberg is a spectacular atlas of sand grains as seen through the lenses of a microscope. The author – an artist, scientist, and inventor – has photographed and written the text for this delightful book that in 10 brief chapters, takes the reader on an amazing visual journey into the microscopic realm of sand grains and beach deposits from around the world. The primary aim of the author is to enlighten the world to the existence of this unique world of ‘‘sand art.” It all begins in Hawaii and its fabulous multicolored beaches that contain myriad minerals eroded from volcanic rocks – from pure olivine crystal beaches to black basaltic beaches and everything in between. Chapter 2 provides the author’s background as well as some technical details regarding the various ways he has used the microscope to photograph sand grains. The montage of Maui sand grains made of twenty-seven individual photographs (p. 33) sums up the author’s primary objective to ‘‘create art through the microscope”. In Chapter 3, the geology, mineralogy and oceanography of sand grains and beaches are highlighted. The creation of sand by erosion, beach mineralogy and formation, coral reefs and beach ecology, are all discussed and beautifully illustrated with micrographs and photos. Chapter 4 presents the