Blaming Teachers: Professionalization Policies and the Failure of Reform in American History

New Directions in the History of Education

by Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz

Historically, Americans of all stripes have concurred that teachers were essential to the success of the public schools and nation. However, they have also concurred that public school teachers were to blame for the failures of the schools and identified professionalization as a panacea.
 
In Blaming Teachers, Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz reveals that historical professionalization reforms subverted public school teachers’ professional legitimacy. Superficially, professionalism connotes authority, expertise, and status. Professionalization for teachers never unfolded this way; rather, it was a policy process fueled by blame where others identified teachers’ shortcomings. Policymakers, school leaders, and others understood professionalization measures for teachers as efficient ways to bolster the growing bureaucratic order of the public schools through regulation and standardization. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century with the rise of municipal public school systems and reaching into the 1980s, Blaming Teachers traces the history of professionalization policies and the discourses of blame that sustained them.

251 pages, Hardcover

Published August 14, 2020

Reviews

[Elizabeth Farnham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read about how teachers have been shouldering the blame for systemic issues since the introduction of public education in the 1800s. D’Amico Pawlewicz does a great job of highlighting how policymakers and politicians have used the guise of professionalizing the field of education as a means to control teachers even more, especially through the feminization and racialization of the role and the bureaucratic oversight of schools and teachers.

[Jenn C Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for grad school. An interesting read for those interested in the history of teachers and education.

[Paul Boone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good scholarly review of the discourse of blame centered on teachers by education reformers, school leaders, cultural critics, and political leaders.

[Nancy]

Ordered and will be reading.