Reconstructing American Education

by Michael B. Katz

One of the leading historians of education in the United States here develops a powerful interpretation of the uses of history in educational reform and of the relations among democracy, education, and the capitalist state. Michael Katz discusses the reshaping of American education from three perspectives. First is the perspective of How did American education take shape? The second is that of What can a historian say about recent criticisms and proposals for improvement? The third is that of What drives the politics of educational history? Katz shows how the reconstruction of America’s educational past can be used as a framework for thinking about current reform. Contemporary concepts such as public education, institutional structures such as the multiversity, and modern organizational forms such as bureaucracy all originated as solutions to problems of public policy. The petrifaction of these historical products―which are neither inevitable nor immutable―has become, Katz maintains, one of the mighty obstacles to change.

The book’s central questions are as much ethical and political as they are practical. How do we assess the relative importance of efficiency and responsiveness in educational institutions? Whom do we really want institutions to serve? Are we prepared to alter institutions and policies that contradict fundamental political principles? Why have some reform strategies consistently failed? On what models should institutions be based? Should schools and universities be further assimilated to the marketplace and the state? Katz’s iconoclastic treatment of these issues, vividly and clearly written, will be of interest to both specialists and general readers. Like his earlier classic, The Irony of Early School Reform (1968), this book will set a fresh agenda for debate in the field.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Nathan Cleckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Origins of Public Education
Historical realism of education scholars: education history is not a guide to justly move from present to future. We don't need to think of it as a flower planted. Critical analysis of history is dark.
Large ed systems have been around for a long time and were developed quickly. Industrialization, politics, urbanization progenized the robust systems of education within 50 years. This maturation of the system grew in tandem with the urban political machine
Institutionalization
Ship urchins away, whip criminals and release, chase the poor out of town. These were the modes of noninstitutionalized society. These things changed and so did education.
Mid 1800s the family structure also changes
Feminization of education
Mandatory school attendance creates demand for workers. Men busy working main career and women can be paid half. While it was an exploitation of their labor, many filled the role happily as one of the few socially acceptable forms of employment for women.
Side note: capitalism killed apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is bound labor, a theme at odds with capitalism.
Alternative Models of Public Education
Paternalistic voluntarism
Case study 1805 NY society aligned with church to educate the poorest, non church going children. Controversy hits when the public grapples with the church using public money for this education.
The NYPSS grows too big, and the scope is crisiced. You can not be paternal to everyone, who decides who gets the benefits of paternalistic voluntarism becomes the conundrum. We then begin to differentiate between public and pauper and this begins social structures at odds with capitalist democracy.
Democratic localism
An answer to paternalistic voluntarism problems. Democratic localism regulates schools to districts in a model that is already working in rural america. A board will oversee the district, but the board can be catholic or appoint all catholic teachers. Black power later uses this structure for its benefit.
Some anti-Board of Education ideas are very powerful here. The centralization of education is impossible, non american, european, prushan military model, and stiemies the spirit of educaition.
Brownson sees normal schools as whig party apparatus of control.
Corporate voluntarism
When a corporation creates a school
Facebook and summit, dcp and google
1956 Norwich Free academy
Voters realize public money going to school for elites and vote support down
Incipient bureaucracy
Of these four models, much of the conversation was centered around New York