The American school: from the Puritans to no child left behind

1. Thinking critically about history : ideological management, culture wars, and consumerism

Reasons for studying American school history

My perspective on educational history

Culture and religion as central themes in educational history

Schools as one form of ideological management

The role of racism

Economic goals

Consumerism and environmental education

2. Religion and authority in colonial education

The role of education in colonial society

Authority and social status in colonial New England

Colonialism and educational policy

Language and cultural domination

Native Americans : education as cultural imperialism

Enslaved Africans : Atlantic Creoles

Enslaved Africans : the plantation system

The idea of secular education : freedom of thought and the establishment of academies

Benjamin Franklin and education as social mobility

The family and the child

Conclusion

3. Nationalism, multiculturalism, and moral reform in the new republic

Noah Webster : nationalism and the creation of a dominant culture

Thomas Jefferson : a natural aristocracy

Moral reform and faculty psychology

Concepts of childhood : protected, working, poor, rural, and enslaved

Charity schools, the Lancasterian system, and prisons

Institutional change and the American college

Public versus private schools

Conclusion : continuing issues in American education.

4. The ideology and politics of the common school

Three distinctive features of the common school movement

Workingmen and the struggle for a Republican education

The Whigs and the Democrats

The birth of the high school

The continuing debate about the common school ideal

Conclusion

5. The common school and the threat of cultural pluralism

The increasing multicultural population of the United States

Irish Catholics : a threat to Anglo-American schools and culture

Slavery and freedom in the North : African Americans and schools in the new republic

Native Americans

Conclusion

6. Organizing the American school : the nineteenth-century schoolmarm

The American teacher

The maternal model of instruction

The evolution of the bureaucratic model

McGuffey's readers and the spirit of capitalism

Female teachers civilize the West

Conclusion

7. Multiculturalism and the failure of the common school ideal

Mexican Americans : race and citizenship

Asian Americans : exclusion and segregation

Native American citizenship

Citizenship for African Americans

Issues regarding Puerto Rican citizenship

Puerto Rican American educational issues

Conclusion : setting the stage for the great civil rights movement.

8. Growth of the welfare function of schools : school showers, kindergarten, playgrounds, home economics, social centers, and cultural conflict

Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe

Integrated time line

The kindergarten movement

Home economics : education of the new consumer woman

School cafeterias, the American cuisine, and processed foods

The play movement

Summer school

Social centers

The new culture wars

Resisting segregation : African Americans

The second crusade for Black education

Resisting segregation : Mexican Americans

Native American boarding schools

Resisting discrimination : Asian Americans

Educational resistance in Puerto Rico

Conclusion : public schooling as America's welfare institution

9. The school and the workplace : high school, junior high school, and vocational guidance and education

The high school

Vocational education, vocational guidance, and the junior high school

Public benefit or corporate greed?

Adapting the classroom to the workplace : Herbart, Dewey, and Thorndike

Conclusion : the meaning of equality of opportunity

10. Meritocracy : the experts take charge

Meritocracy and efficient management

Measurement, democracy, and the superiority of Anglo-Americans

Closing the door to immigrants : the 1924 Immigration Act

"Backward" children and special classrooms

Eugenics and the age of sterilization

The university and meritocracy

Conclusion

Integrated time line.

11. The politics of knowledge : teachers' unions, the American Legion, and the American way

Keep the schools out of politics : the politics of education

The politics of professionalism : teachers versus administrators

The rise of the National Education Association

The political changes of the Depression years

The politics of ideological management : the American Legion

Selling the "American way" in schools and on billboards

Conclusion

12. Schools, media, and popular culture : influencing the minds of children and teenagers

Educators and the movies

Should commercial radio or educators determine national culture?

Creating the super hero for children's radio

Controlling the influence of comic books

Educating children as consumers

The creation of teenage markets

Children and youth from the 1950s to the 21st century

Conclusion

13. Education and national policy

The Cold War and national educational policy

Meritocracy and The Big Test

Ideological management : anticommunism

Back to the basics : scholars and conservatives take charge

The National Defense Education Act

The war on poverty

Children's Television Workshop and Sesame Street

Conclusion.

14. The great civil rights movement, the new immigration, and the new culture wars

School desegregation

The reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Native Americans

Asian Americans : educating the "model minority"

Hispanic/Latino Americans

Bilingual education : the culture wars continued

The Immigration Act of 1965 and the new American population

Multicultural education, immigration, and the culture wars

Schools and the women's movement

Children with special needs

The coloring of textbook town

Liberating the textbook town housewife for more consumption

Conclusion : the Cold War and civil rights

15. Education in the twenty-first century

The religious right and school prayer

Environmental education : the radical paradigm

The Nixon administration and the conservative reaction

Accountability and the increasing power of the standardized test

The Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years : national standards, choice, and savage inequalities

The end of the common school : choice, privatization, and charter schools

The commercialization of schools and education for consumption

Textbooks : environmentalism as the new enemy

No Child Left Behind : fulfillment of the American educational dream?

Conclusion.