Popular education and its discontents Book

Popularization, multitudinousnes, and politicization - it is this combination of achievements and problems and its bearing on present-day educational policy that the author explores in these three essays. The first deals with the rising chorus of dissatisfaction, especially with regard to academic standards, that has accompanied the popularization of education in the United States since the middle of the nineteenth century. The second explores the radical changes that have occurred in those non-school institutions of education since World War II, especially in the education provided by families and workplaces as well as the education (and miseducation) provided by television. The third essay examines the longstanding tendency of Americans to try to solve certain social problems indirectly through education rather than directly through politics.