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The Urban School - A Factory for Failure (Paperback, 2nd edition)
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The Urban School - A Factory for Failure (Paperback, 2nd edition)
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Americans worry continually about their schools with frequent
discussions of the "crisis" in American education, of the
"failures" of the public school systems, and of the inability of
schools to meet the current challenges of contemporary life. Such
concerns date back at least to the nineteenth century. A thread
that weaves its way through the critiques of American elementary
and secondary schools is that the educational system is not serving
its children well, that more should be done to enhance achievement
and higher performance. These critiques first began when the United
States was industrializing and were later amplified when the
Soviets and Japan were thought to be grinding down the competitive
position of America. At the start of the twenty-first century, as
we discuss globalization and maintaining our leadership position in
the world economy, they are being heard again.
"The Urban School: A Factory for Failure" challenges these
assumptions about American education. Indeed, a basic premise of
the book is that the American school system is working quite
well-doing exactly what is expected of it. To wit, that the schools
in the United States affirm, reflect, and reinforce the social
inequalities that exist in the social structures of the society.
Stated differently, the schools are not great engines for
equalizing the existing social inequalities. Rather, they work to
reinforce the social class differences that we have had in the past
and continue to have in more pronounced ways at present.
Rist uses both sociological and anthropological methods to examine
life in one segregated African-American school in the mid-western
United States. A classroom of some thirty children were followed
from their first day of kindergarten through the second grade.
Detailed accounts of the day-by-day process of sorting,
stratifying, and separating the children by social class
backgrounds demonstrates the means of ensuring that both the poor
and middle-class students soon learned their appropriate place in
the social hierarchy of the school. Instructional time, discipline,
and teacher attention all varied by social class of the students,
with those at the bottom of the ladder consistently receiving few
positive rewards and many negative sanctions.
When "The Urban School" was first published in 1973, the National
School Boards Association called it one of the ten most influential
books on American education for the year. It remains essential
reading for educators, sociologists, and economists.
Ray C. Rist is a senior evaluation officer with the Operations
Evaluation Department of the World Bank. He has held senior
positions in both the legislative and executive branches of the
United States government as well as teaching positions at Cornell
University, Johns Hopkins University, and George Washington
University.
""The Urban School" is a timely and much needed wake-up call to a
educational policy and contemporary social problem that urgently
needs to be addressed across the country and in every urban school
district."--"The Bookwatch"
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