To recreate "a community of commitment to public schooling,"
educational historian Tyack (The One Best System, etc.) and
political theorist Hansot have reviewed its much-maligned
leadership - in the era of public-school expansion, 18201890; of
institutionalization, 1890-1954; and of advance and retreat, 1954
onward. The result is a history that complements Cremin's
Transformation of the School (1961) and American Education (1890);
a smooth, clear presentation of quite sophisticated concepts - in,
however, bland, repetitive, unstimulating prose; and, as regards
the book's purposes, mixed success. Insofar as public-school
leadership has been undermined by revisionist and radical criticism
of elitism (or propagating the dominant social, economic, and
cultural values), Tyack and Hansot offer a balanced,
non-conspiratorial reinterpretation of the mid-19th-century
"common-school crusade" - as a means both of teaching common values
and of suppressing variant ones - to which the public-school-minded
can give intellectual and emotional assent. Similarly, they
re-interpret the Progressive social-engineering push - "the experts
would run everything to everyone's benefit" - as both intrinsically
self-serving and outwardly idealistic. In either case, the
educational leadership (not only white, male, Anglo-Saxon,
Protestant, but also rural and poorish in origin) expressed what it
believed; and believed what it expressed. All this is reintegrative
and persuasive: a comprehensible, imperfect, unshameful past. But
the present crisis in educational leadership is also, as Tyack and
Hansot recognize, a crisis of faith - and their efforts to shore it
up are only partly successful. To the good, they point to the
inherent, stultifying bias against controversy - coupled with a
willingness to compromise, quietly and pragmatically, on some
differences. (Thus, German language schools were allowed for a time
- on the well-founded belief that "the next generation . . . will
work into the English schools entirely"; but no ground was given to
the Catholics on the schools' "pan-Protestantism" - wherefore there
arose the country's "largest 'alternative school system.'") This is
cautionary and constructive counsel. But most of the burden of
generating a new faith rests on the profiles of dissenting school
leaders - most especially Chicago Supt. of Schools Ella Flagg Young
("The Leader as Democrat"), East Harlem high-school principal
Leonard Corelle ("The Leader as Community Organizer"), and
Oakland's tragically-assassinated black standout, Marcus Foster
("The Leader as Mobilizer"). And while the Young material is part
of an examination of the aborted female drive for equality in the
Progressive era, the Covello and Foster material has little
historical or theoretical grounding (the post-1954 section is
cursory, in any case). These are inspirational role models, simply,
which fail to suggest how a national "community of commitment" can
be created. Withal, the book is important both for its considerable
accomplishment and for its large aspiration. (Kirkus Reviews)
Can America's faith in public education be restored? As they
analyze the ways in which public school leaders successfully formed
and transformed American education, historian Tyack and political
scientist Hansot conclude that the main challenge facing today's
leaders is to create a new community of commitment to public
education as a common good.
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