Joel Spring

Joel Spring (born in San Diego, California on September 24, 1940) is an American academic. He writes on American and global educational policy with over twenty books on these topics. His great-great-grandfather was the first Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory and his grandfather, Joel S. Spring, was a local district chief at the time Indian Territory became Oklahoma. Joel Spring worked as a railroad conductor on the Illinois Central Railroad and for many years lived each summer on an island off the coast of Sitka, Alaska. His novel, Alaskan Visions, includes many of his Alaskan experiences.

He received his Ph.D. in educational policy studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Spring’s major research interests are history of education, globalization and education, multicultural education, Native American culture, the politics of education, and human rights education. As of 2008, and A New Paradigm for Global School Systems: Education for a Long and Happy Life. Some of Spring's other books are Pedagogies of Globalization: The Rise of the Educational Security State; How Educational Ideologies are Shaping Global Society; and Education and the Rise of the Global Economy. His most important textbooks are American Education (now in its 13th edition); The American School: From the Puritans to No Child Left Behind (now in its 7th edition, previously titled The American School: 1642-2004) and Conflict of Interests: The Politics of American Education (now in its 5th edition).

His book Wheels in the Head: Educational Philosophies of Authority, Freedom, and Culture from Socrates to Human Rights was recently translated into Chinese and published by the University of Peking Press.