Joel Spring received his Ph.D. in educational policy studies from the University of Wisconsin. He is currently a Professor at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. 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. After falling in love with his editor, Joel moved to New York.

Professor Spring’s major research interests are history of education, multicultural education, Native American culture, the politics of education, global education, and human rights education. He is the author of over twenty scholarly books with the most recent being How Educational Ideologies are Shaping Global Society; Education and the Rise of the Global Economy; The Universal Right to Education: Justification, Definition, and Guidelines; Globalization and Educational Rights; and Educating the Consumer Citizen: A History of the Marriage of Schools, Advertising, and Media. Joel’s most important textbooks are American Education (now in its 11th edition) and the American School 1642-2004 (now in its 6th edition).