Elise Boulding’s Work as a Framework for Dismantling No Child Left Behind: Respect, Solitude, Imagination and Partnerships

This paper utilizes the work of Elise Boulding as a theoretical framework for analyzing the potentials and shortcomings of the US educational policy, No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The interrelated concepts of respect, solitude, imagination, and partnerships from Boulding’s scholarship are detailed. NCLB is summarized along with its historical context, based in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 , its assumptions, goals, and the arguments of supporters and critics of the policy. Examples of how Boulding’s concepts are and can be employed in the US classrooms, even despite NCLB, are discussed. Concluding the paper, the contradictions between the assumptions and results of NCLB and Boulding’s framework are exposed to ultimately argue that No Child Left Behind must be largely dismantled in order to honor Boulding’s legacy and challenge of enabling peace.