"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

“As this important read documents, American education, from its formative colonial days, through its agricultural and industrial revolutions to its emergence as a powerful empire, has been guided by the forces of the times to serve the perceived needs of an evolving nation. Today’s explosion of knowledge, technological innovations, environmental challenges, and the social upheaval they are begetting has rendered the prevailing model for ‘schooling’ in America unsuited to the times. 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 Purpose. 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, former Dean of the School of Education, East Carolina University, and the former Vice President for the 17-campus University of North Carolina System

“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.” 

Dr. Jo Boaler, Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education (Mathematics), Stanford University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Great Britain

“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 D. Feden, Ed.D.
Professor Emeritus Department of Education, 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.” 

Dr. Gary A. Laursen 
Director & President, High Latitude Mycological Research Institute 
Affiliate Professor of Biology, Universities of Alaska and of Montana