A History of American Education Book

Chapter One Introduction

What is globalization?

How does the history of American education describe a process of globalization?

What is the arrangement of the various chapters of this book?

What limits the discussions in this book?

Chapter Two Education in Colonial America

What was the Spanish colonial empire?

How did Spain transmit its culture?

How did the missions play an educational role?

What was the nature of English colonialism?

What was colonial English education?

How did the Puritans offer education to Native Americans?

Conclusion

Chapter Three The Expansion Westward

How did the Continental Congress resolve the problems with the western frontier?

How did the Continental Congress enhance the spread of schools?

How did controversies over the Bible in classrooms and women as teachers influence the spread of schools?

How did the Northwest Ordinance influence state control of education?

Conclusion

Chapter Four Educational Reform in the Northeast

Why did reformers think there was the need for state control of education?

How did teacher training develop in the early nineteenth century?

How did school architecture influence curriculum formation?

How did European models influence curriculum formation and teacher training?

How did schools change during the common school movement?

Conclusion

Chapter Five Education in the Antebellum South

How did commentators disagree about the common school movement in the South?

What distinguished the common school movement in the South?

How did education spread among slaves and slaveholders?

What types of schools were available in the antebellum South?

How did academies serve the South before the American Civil War?

What obstacles prevented the rise of state supported schools in the South?

Conclusion

Chapter Six Education during the Reconstruction and the New South

What were the effects of the Reconstruction in the South?

How did the Reconstruction policies influence the spread of public education?

What were the effects of the Reconstruction in the South?

How did the Reconstruction policies influence the spread of public education?

What did the experiences of the missionary teachers suggest about schools and social reform?

How did public education spread through the South?

Why did the idea of the New South require racially segregated schools?

Conclusion

Chapter Seven Organizing Schools According to a New Definition of Democracy

What was the relation between religion and education?

How could Catholic schools and public schools cooperate?

How could educators encourage the development of uniform schools under systems of local control?

How did educators consolidate the management of schools, make student attendance more regular, and improve the curriculum?

How did the curriculum expand to include more subjects than academics?

How did the resistance to annual examinations of elementary pupils enhance the growth of higher education?

Conclusion

Chapter Eight The Growth of Bureaucratic Organizations

How did urban reform encourage the growth of bureaucracies?

How did the consolidation of school districts lead to bureaucratic expansion?

How did superintendents’ efforts to improve schools increase bureaucratic controls?

How did the growth of bureaucracies influence teacher preparation?

How did the growth of bureaucracies influence the curriculum?

Conclusion

Chapter Nine W. T. Harris, John Dewey, and Progressive Educational Reform

How did German idealism become an American philosophy of education?

How did idealistic philosophy become science?

How did Dewey revise Harris’s ideas of knowledge and curriculum?

How did Dewey initiate a progressive education movement?

Why did progressive schools come to adopt any currently popular idea?

Could progressive educational reforms encourage individual liberation?

Conclusion

Chapter Ten Science, Professionalism, and Teaching

How did popular conceptions of science change in the nineteenth century to make a science of education appear reasonable?

How did the child study movement initiate the development of educational psychology?

How did the educational psychologists come to adopt narrow methods of research?

How did educational psychology replace philosophic thinking as a guide to effective instruction?

How did bias influence the findings of educational psychologists?

Conclusion

Chapter Eleven Using Committees to Reorganize Schools

How did educational reformers undertake the process of changing school organization?

How did efforts to economize instruction change secondary education?

How did mathematics teachers react to the reform efforts?

How did teachers of ancient and foreign languages react to reform efforts?

How popular was the drive to organize schools around the ideal of social utility?

Conclusion

Chapter Twelve Building Curriculums on Student Interest

What was the project method?

What was wrong with the project method?

How did the project method influence other educators across the globe?

How did educators build curriculums on students’ interests in the United States?

How did encouraging students to pursue their interests encourage conformity?

Conclusion

Chapter Thirteen Independent Educational Commissions to Spread Democracy

What were the effects of federally sponsored educational programs?

What were the effects of independent educational commissions?

How did U.S. educators influence schools in Japan?

How did U.S. educators influence schools in Germany?

What did critics think of the influences of independent agencies on education around the world?

Conclusion

Chapter Fourteen International Conditions Influence the American Curriculum

How did educators seek to reinforce patriotism?

How did the Cold War influence the teaching of mathematics and science?

How did the Cold war influence changes in curriculum theory?

How did World War II and the Cold War influence the civil rights movement?

How did attorneys and government officials expand the meanings of the Brown decision?

Conclusion

Chapter Fifteen Pluralism, Effective Education, and Choice

How did the process of racial desegregation slow or reverse?

How did social conceptions influence the racial segregation of schools?

How successful was the education of children from low-income families of minority groups?

How did the conservative reaction redirect educational reform?

What happened when reformers tried to introduce free market systems to education?

Conclusion

Chapter Sixteen Globalization and the History of American Education

How did historians seek to illuminate social problems while remaining objective?

How could educational histories inspire teachers while illuminating the relation of schools and societies?

How could historians describe schools as part of wider institutional networks?

Could history enable people to improve social conditions?

How did educational historians react to the revisionists?

How did historians influence teacher training?

How did postmodernism change the field of history?

Conclusion

A Summing Up