Classic Edition Sources: Education Book

Aims of Education xxii

Selection 1JOHN DEWEY, from “Democracy in Education,” The Elementary School Teacher (December 1903) 1

“These three motives—of affection, of social growth, and of scientific inquiry—must prove as nearly irresistible as anything human when they are once united. And, above all else, recognition of the spiritual basis of democracy, the efficacy and responsibility of freed intelligence, is necessary to secure this union.”

Selection 2JAMES B. CONANT, from The American High School Today (McGraw-Hill, 1959) 6

“Three things are necessary to have a good high school, provided that it is of sufficient size: first, a school board composed of devoted, intelligent, understanding citizens who realize fully the distinction between policy making and administration; second, a first-rate superintendent; and third, a good principal.”

Selection3 THE COMMITTEE ON THE OBJECTIVES OF A GENERAL EDUCATION IN A FREE SOCIETY, from General Education in a Free Society (Harvard University Press, 1945) 13

“General education must consciously aim at these abilities: at effective thinking, communication, the making of relevant judgments, and the discrimination of values.”

Selection 4 BOYD H. BODE, from Progressive Education at the Crossroads (Newson & Co., 1938) 21

“The philosophy of progressive education implies a challenging philosophy of social organization…. This implicit social ideal has been lost sight of, or has had only superficial consideration, by many exponents and adherents of the progressive movement.”

Selection 5 SAMUEL BOWLES AND HERBERT GINTIS, from Schooling in Capitalist America (Basic Books, 1976) 27

“A revolutionary transformation of social life will not simply happen through piecemeal change. Rather, we believe it will occur only as the result of a prolonged struggle based on hope and a total vision of a qualitatively new society, waged by those social classes and groups who stand to benefit from the new era.”

Selection 6 MAXINE GREENE, from “Liberal Education and the Newcomer,” Phi Delta Kappan (May 1979) 32

“I am proposing that teachers think about ways in which the liberal learning and some awareness of the common world might permeate the schools. One reason has to do with loving our children. Another has to do with the possibility that there will be an increase in opportunities for empowering the young with the skills and habits of literacy.”

Conceptions of Schooling, Teaching, and Learning 37

Selection 7GEORGE S. COUNTS, from “Dare Progressive Education Be Progressive?” Progressive Education (April 1932) 38

“If life were peaceful and quiet and undisturbed by great issues, we might, with some show of wisdom, center our attention on the nature of the child. But with the world as it is, we cannot afford for a single instant to remove our eyes from the social scene.”

Selection 8 BOYD H. BODE AND JOHN L. CHILDS, from The Social Frontier (November 1938) 43

“There is a growing realization that the social implications of education must receive more serious consideration than has been given to them in the past…. What is required of progressive education is not a choice between academic detachment and adoption of a specific program for social reform, but a renewed loyalty to the principle of democracy.”

Selection 9 JACQUES BARZUN, from Teacher in America (Little, Brown and Co., 1945) 49

“Education is indeed the dullest of subjects and I intend to say as little about it as I can. For three years past, now, the people of this country have knitted their brows over the shortcoming of the schools…. And by a strange necessity, talk about education never varies.”

Selection 10 LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND, from The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work (Jossey Bass, 1997) 54

“Securing greater student learning will ultimately depend on our developing more skillful teaching and more supportive schooling. Otherwise, the outcome of raising learning standards will be greater failure rather than higher levels of accomplishment. That some schools have learned to teach effectively is proof that others can do so as well.”

Selection 11 SONIA NIETO, from Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education (Longman, 1992) 59

“Affirming Diversity.… implies that cultural, linguistic, and other differences can and should be accepted, respected, and used as a basis for learning and teaching. Rather than maladies to be cured or problems to be confronted, differences are an important and necessary starting point for learning and teaching and can enrich the experiences of students and teachers.”

Selection 12 WILLIAM C. AYERS, from To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, 2d ed. (Teachers College Press, 2001) 65

“The fundamental message of the teacher is this: You must change your life. Whoever you are, wherever you've been, whatever you've done, the teacher invites you to a second chance, another round perhaps a different conclusion…. The teacher beckons you to change your path.”

Selection 13 LISA DELPIT, from Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (New Press, 1995) 69

“In any discussion of education and culture, it is important to remember that children are individuals and cannot be made to fit into any preconceived mold of how they are ‘supposed’ to act. The question is not necessarily how to create the perfect ‘culturally matched’ learning situation for each ethnic group, but rather how to recognize when there is a problem for a particular child and how to seek its cause in the most broadly conceived fashion.”

Selection 14 ROBERT V. BULLOUGH, JR., from Uncertain Lives: Children of Promise, Teachers of Hope (Teachers College Press, 2001) 74

“The larger issue of educational reform is often ignored: What resources and social conditions need to be in place outside of the schools to assure all children optimal opportunities to learn within school? To say all children can learn without creating conditions supportive of learning is simply bad faith.”

Conceptions of Subject Matter: Instruction and Curriculum 82

Selection 15HILDA TABA, from “General Techniques of Curriculum Planning,” American Education in the Postwar Period (University of Chicago Press, 1945) 83

“Curriculum-making is not a simple process of outlining the content of the subject matter to be taught. It involves analysis of important social needs and problems, of the nature, capacities, and needs of the learners, and understanding of the behavior characteristics of the students.”

Selection 16 PHILIP W. JACKSON, from Life in Classrooms (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968) 90

“We can see that if students are to face the demands of the classroom life with equanimity they must learn to be patient. This means that they must be able to disengage, at least temporarily, their feelings from their actions. It also means, of course, that they must be able to re-engage feelings and actions when conditions are appropriate.”

Selection 17 MICHAEL APPLE, from Cultural Politics and Education (Teachers College Press, 1996) 95

“Education is deeply implicated in the politics of culture. The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somewhat appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone's selection, some group's vision of legitimate knowledge.”

Selection 18 JEANNIE OAKES, from Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (Yale University Press, 1985) 103

“There is every indication that the achievement of equity need not require averaging the quality of education students receive so that top students receive less and low tracks receive more to create a large, homogeneous middle. There is every reason to believe that there are essential, intrinsic qualities in the values and processes that promote equity, and that these qualities (fairness, the common welfare, cooperation, among others) will result in the highest levels of achievement.”

Selection 19 JAMES MACDONALD, from Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists (McCutchan, 1975) 110

“The purpose of these [curriculum theorists] is to develop and criticize conceptual schema in the hope that new ways of talking about curriculum, which may in the future be far more fruitful than present orientations, will be forthcoming. At the present time, they would maintain that a much more playful, freefloating process is called for by the state of the art.”

Selection 20 NEL NODDINGS, from The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education (Teachers College Press, 2005) 115

“The school, like the family, is a multipurpose institution. It cannot concentrate only on academic goals any more than a family can restrict its responsibilities to, say, feeding and housing its children.”

Selection 21 ANGELA VALENZUELA, from Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (SUNY Press, 1999) 121

“In a world that does not value bilingualism or biculturalism, youth may fall prey to the subtle yet unrelenting message of the worthlessness of their communities.”

Race, Class, Gender, and the American Constitutional Tradition in Education 126

Selection 22 W. E. B. DUBOIS, from The Souls of Black Folk (McClurg&Co., 1903) 127

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness—an American, A negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

Selection 23 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, from Up from Slavery (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1901) 132

“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing…. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.”

Selection 24 U.S. SUPREME COURT, from Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) 138

“Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.”

Selection 25 JONATHAN KOZOL, from Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (Crown, 1991) 141

“My deepest impression … was simply the impression that these urban schools were, by and large, extraordinarily unhappy places. With few exceptions, they reminded me of ‘garrisons’ or ‘outposts’ in a foreign nation.”

Selection 26U.S. CONGRESS, from Public Law 94–142, Education of All Handicapped Children Act (November 29, 1975) 145

“Because of the lack of adequate services within the public school system, families are often forced to find services outside the public school system, often at great distance from their residence and at their own expense.”

Selection 27 AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN, from The AAUW Report: How Schools Shortchange Girls (AAUW, 1992) 148

“The AAUW provides policymakers with impartial data on the ways in which our school system is failing to meet the needs of girls and with specific strategies that can be used to effect change. The wealth of statistical evidence must convince even the most skeptical that gender bias in our schools is shortchanging girls—and compromising our country.”

Selection 28 MAXINE GREENE, from Landscapes of Learning (Teachers Col lege Press, 1978) 153

“Sexism, to me, is emblematic of constraints and closures. It is one of the ways of drawing out the summons to an open future; it cancels personal possibility.”

Selection 29 UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS, from A Better Chance to Learn: Bilingual-Bicultural Education (United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1975) 159

“In Lau v. Nichols, the Supreme Court affirmed that interpretation of Title VI's scope, stating: ‘Under these state-imposed standards there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.’”

Conceptions of Educational Change 163

Selection 30 RAYMOND CALLAHAN, from Education and the Cult of Efficiency (University of Chicago Press, 1962) 164

“The continuous pressure for economy has produced a situation in which many men with inappropriate and inadequate training are leaders in our public schools. Aside from the effect this has had on the quality of work within the schools in the last forty years their training has left them ill-equipped to understand what needs to be done in education and therefore unable to communicate this to the public.”

Selection 31 THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, from A Nation at Risk (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983) 169

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves…. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

Selection 32 DAVID TYACK AND LARRY CUBAN, from Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Harvard University Press, 1995) 175

“The concepts of progress and decline that have dominated discourse about educational reform distort the actual development of the educational enterprise over time. The ahistorical nature of most current reform arguments results in both a magnification of present defects in relation to the past and an understatement of the difficult of changing the system.”

Selection 33 NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, from the Executive Summary of No Child Left Behind (January 8, 2002) 180

“The quality of our public schools directly affects us all—as parents, as students, and as citizens. Yet too many children in America are segregated by low expectations, illiteracy, and self-doubt. In a constantly changing world that is demanding increasingly complex skills from its workforce, children are literally being left behind.”

Selection 34 THEODORE SIZER, from Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (Houghton Mifflin, 1984) 185

“There is a sizable core of fine teachers and administrators in our schools. They are often demoralized, but they could, if empowered, lead a renaissance of American high schools: their numbers are large enough. But they need the trust of those in political power.”

Selection 35 DAVID C. BERLINER AND BRUCE J. BIDDLE, from The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools (Perseus Books, 1995) 190

“Early in the 1980s, prominent figures in our federal government unleashed an unprecedented onslaught on American&'s schools, claiming that those schools had recently deteriorated…. These claims were said to be supported by evidence, although somehow that evidence was rarely cited or appeared only as simple, misleading analyses of limited data.”

Selection 36 JEAN ANYON, from Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement (Routledge, 2005) 195

“Middle and high school teachers, in particular, can make a powerful contribution to movement-building by engaging students in civic activism. Both the civil rights movement and successful youth efforts to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18 (legalized in 1971) demonstrate that activism by young people can make a huge impact on American society.”

Selection 37 DEBORAH MEIER, from The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem (Beacon Press, 1995) 201

“If we intend to dramatically improve the education of American kids, teachers must be challenged to invent schools they would like to teach and learn in, organized around the principles of learning that we know matter. That's the simple idea that teachers are beginning to put into practice.”