Public schooling in the 19th century cultivated in students a shared sense of identity as citizens with a common culture. However, posits David Labaree, U.S. schools are less effective than they used to be at serving this purpose, making their value to the nation-state open to questioning. Labaree considers three common functions that public…

Eminent historian David Labaree describes a gradual shift, over the last two centuries, in Americans' beliefs and attitudes about the goals of public education. At its founding, our school system was designed mainly to serve the public good, conceived at the time as an effort to create a unified citizenry. By the early 20th century, the schools…

Read the news about America's colleges and universities--rising student debt, affirmative action debates, and conflicts between faculty and administrators--and it's clear that higher education in this country is a total mess. But as David F. Labaree reminds us in this book, it's always been that way. And that's exactly why it has become the most…

American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little interest in universities and provided little support. The war spurred a large investment in defence-based scientific research in universities, and the…

In this 2013 John Dewey Society Lecture I examine the history and the structure of the American system of higher education. I argue that the true hero of the story is the evolved "form" of the American university and that all the things we love about it, like free speech, are the side effects of a structure that arose for other purposes.…

The US is suffering from a school syndrome, which arises from Americans' insistence on having things both ways through the magical medium of education. Society wants schools to express the highest ideals as a society and the greatest aspirations as individuals, but only as long as they remain ineffective in actually realizing them, since one does…

In this essay David Labaree examines the tension between two competing visions of the purposes of education that have shaped American public schools. From one perspective, we have seen schooling as a way to preserve and promote public aims, such as keeping the faith, shoring up the republic, or promoting economic growth. From the other…

In this reaction, the author concentrates on evaluating the study's broader interpretive claims. He states that the articles reviewed have the following three purposes: (1) to explore the ways in which a variety of factors shape school change over time; (2) to show how the five factors combine at key points in the story to create what Ivor…

A study of the first 80 years (1838-1918) of Central High School in Philadelphia found several factors which encouraged excellence: a meritocratic ideology, voluntary enrollment, competitive selection of students and faculty, and the structure of public education at the time. This picture contrasts sharply with today's educational context. (GC)

This paper tells a story about progressivism, schools and schools of education in twentieth-century America. Depending on one's position in the politics of education, this story can assume the form of a tragedy or a romance, or perhaps even a comedy. The heart of the tale is the struggle for control of American education in the early twentieth…

The aim of this paper is to explore the process by which the high school teacher lost his position of power and privilege and to consider the implications of this process for a fuller understanding of the history of schooling during the period of decline. This change is analyzed by looking in both the earlier and later periods at three different…

Described is the development of the modern hegemonic curriculum--i.e., one in which knowledge is stratified, academic, and appropriated through individual competition--in a nineteenth century high school. This developmental process hinged on the relationship between the school's curriculum and its middle-class constituency, a relationship…

In this article, the author makes two alternative arguments about long-term trends in the history of American colleges and universities. The initial argument is that over the years professional education has gradually subverted liberal education. The counterpoint is that, over the same period of time, liberal education has gradually subverted…

Highlighting significant findings and discussing the debate between merit promotion and social promotion, this executive summary presents the main findings and concepts detailed in a larger report on student promotion standards in American education. It outlines the movement toward developing higher promotion standards and summarizes studies of…

Truly democratic politics is lacking in mainstream teacher education. Instead of being structured around efficient production and personal ambition, teacher preparation should be organized to reflect more elevated concerns about educational quality and emergent political and social consequences. Move to professionalize teaching has risen from…