In the last fifteen years revisionists have attacked the ascendency of Ellwood P. Cubberly, and his pietistic picture of the public school, with historical perspectives that relegate public education to being one of many educational functions in American culture and with the view that public schools "miseducate" the American people.…

The theoretical framework proposed here treats political alienation as a normal outcome of the incompatability between egalitarian goals and social inequalities in democratic systems. The framework is applied to the role of education in the United States, a stable democracy, and in West Germany, an emergent democracy. (Author/SJL)