Silin, Jonathan G.

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Silin, Jonathan G.

PERSONAL:

Education: Columbia University, B.A.; Bank Street College of Education, M.S.; Teachers College, Columbia University, Ed.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Bank Street College of Education, 610 W. 112th St., New York, NY 10025-1898. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Bank Street College of Education, New York, NY, faculty member.

WRITINGS:

Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS, Teachers College Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor, with Carol Lippman) Putting the Children First: The Changing Face of Newark's Public Schools, Teachers College Press (New York, NY), 2003.

My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, Educational Theory, Newsday, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Education Week.

SIDELIGHTS:

While a faculty member at New York's Bank Street College of Education, Jonathan G. Silin has worked to restructure and improve early education programs in surrounding schools. One specific area of interest to him is how the subjects of sex and death in the context of HIV and AIDS can be broached with young people. Such is the focus of Silin's Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS. Lambda Book Report reviewer Michael Bronski reported that "the common sense, the intellectual vigor, and the emotional honesty" of the book are "not only welcome, but a shocking reminder of how much work—political as well as personal—we need to do." In another book, Putting the Children First: The Changing Face of Newark's Public Schools, edited with Carol Lippman, Silin recounts the experience of working with the Newark, New Jersey, school system to improve the quality of early education programs.

In the more personal My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents, Silin reveals how his professional and personal lives affected and were affected by the deteriorating health of his parents. His knowledge as an educator was put to the test as he struggled to avoid treating his invalid parents as children. Silin's relationship with his father, who disapproved of his son's homosexuality, was further strained when his father was placed in a nursing home. A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: "Silin's work is at once thoughtful and erudite."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Lambda Book Report, September-October, 1995, Michael Bronski, review of Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS, p. 29.

Publishers Weekly, February 13, 2006, review of My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents, p. 73.