Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform

by David Tyack

For over a century, Americans have translated their cultural anxieties and hopes into dramatic demands for educational reform. Although policy talk has sounded a millennial tone, the actual reforms have been gradual and incremental. Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans' faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices.

In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to "reinvent" schooling?

Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching, History, School, Grad School

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 28, 1995

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

10-4-10 Reread most of book. This was written in 1995, but the parallels to today's education debate about merit pay, technology, standards, etc. are incredible. I still recommend that my friends find this at the library and read the prologue, chapters 1 & 5, and the epilogue. It's kind of wordy, but gives insightful perspective on the supposedly new education "reforms" in the media.

Initial comment: Wow! If only everyone--individuals in education and everyone else--could just read the introduction and 1st chapter of this book, the debate about education and our "broken" system would be exponentially more intelligent.

I am reading my professor's copy of this right now. I am going to buy this for myself and I am seriously going to buy a copy and give it to my state house representative. There's no hope for my state senator or my national senators and representative, so I won't bother.

Finished: Fabulous, important book! The middle 3 chapters are very interesting, as well as instructive on how schools and many of the ideas for "reform" actually started, but the history may a little bit too much to dig through if you're not totally interested in the topic. If you're willing to read about 75 pgs. with a lot of relevance to educational debates today, check this out from the library and read the intro, Chapters 1 and 5, and the epilogue. I am seriously giving this to my rep. after the election in a couple of weeks.

[Jess Schurz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 100-year overview of how America has treated public schools as our firstborn child of sorts, on whom we rest all our aspirations for tomorrow and we subject to our societal concerns and innovations of the moment.

[Caro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Presents a clearly written and concise explanation of the policy measures enacted during the past century in education, and describes the effects of the current NCLB measures. What makes this text so pertinent is that it recignizes the complexity of factors that contribute to a school's academic performance, and it points out that teachers and educational prfesssionals have tyopically been left out of the policy-making process - to the detriment of our current educational system. A satisfying, shrewd, and career-affirming read.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit out of date, but still worthwhile. A dispassionate look at the peculiar American faith in education as the road back to Eden. Offers a solid history of how cyclical political ideologies have generated packages of utopian reform and a nuanced consideration of how those reforms permeate into schools that tinker, tweak, and sometimes outright reject them. But not at all as boring as that sounds.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent source to see the evolution of education and educational policy.

[Amanda Davenport · Rating 2 out of 5]

i'm a dork and i read it over the summer. i wouldn't bash it but i wouldn't recommend it either. nothing special

[Antti Seitamaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first heard about this book in a course on comparative international educational studies last autumn. The name stuck with me and a few weeks ago I happened to come across it at an English-language library here in Quito. I decided to write a short review in order to better retain key information from the book.

The book was written in 1995 and is considered to be a classic dissection of the history of public education reform in the United States. It was written by two heavyweight professors in educational research, David Tyack and Larry Cuban, who seek to explain why public education in the US has always been the target of vehement criticism yet its core practices have endured for more than 150 years.

The authors argue that in the US, public education has historically been seen as one of, if not THE primary solution to societal crises. There has rarely been a time when politicians did not see something amiss in education, some social malady or lingering ineffectiveness requiring swift diagnosis and solution. After public education was first introduced in the early 19th century, religious reformers wanted to change it to produce a body of literate, moral citizens that would transform the United States into God's country. After massive amounts of immigrants from all over the world began arriving to the US in the second half of the 19th century, the millenarian goals of reformers were supplanted by the desire to assimilate people from vastly diverse backgrounds into the political body. Time and again, public education has been painted by worried reformers as a panacea to social anxieties, extending all the way to the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision from 1954, which started the desegregation of public schooling in the US, granting Blacks civil rights long overdue. Since then, the pace of reform has only increased, as pressure to limit public spending or improve national competitiveness have served as animus for reform.

Judging from this history, what can we make out as the defining function of US public education? Tyack & Cuban argue that one of the core dialectics in American culture is between the two forces of capitalistic market forces and democratic politics. On one hand, public education is an arena of social competition where youth are selected for adult roles based on performance. Let’s call this the “opportunity function”, predicated on deeply-ingrained cultural notions of the centrality of individual liberty and merit in pursuing the American dream. At the same time, the purpose of public education has also been to expand access to schooling for students from different backgrounds and develop the basis for participatory politics. Let’s call this the “equality function”. Struggles over the future of public schooling have tended to take place between these two opposites.

Tyack & Cuban argue that the reason so many educational reforms have fizzled and faded is because they have been forced on the school by top-down reformers who fail to understand the “grammar of schooling”. Reformers have a tendency to treat schools as clean-slates, ignoring the fact that their institutional cultures are built on layers upon layers of previous reforms and innovations. There is no way to de-couple today’s education from its historical development. The grammar of schooling that is embedded in US public education has been remarkably consistent and continues to define (and delimit) what actually happens in the classroom between teachers and students. Although reforms are meant to change schools, the authors note that schools in fact change reforms. Teachers adopt that which they find useful and look for ways to bury that which fails to contribute to their professional practice. It is for this reason that policy talk around reforms tend to be loud and hyperbolic while policy action and implementation is painstakingly slow, if indeed it even takes place. Tyack & Cuban provide many examples of progress-preaching reformers (and swindlers) proclaiming the Next Big Thing in education, only to find their plans slowly dissipating through the cracks between the floorboards. The teacher and the school have bested many challengers.

Overall, I found that the book struck an excellent balance between the ideals of truth, justice and beauty. It presented a large-scale historical overview of the challenges faced by reformers and also shed light on the particular nature of the US public education system. It also made clear how ideals of justice and equality have historically occupied a central role in public education, despite obvious egregious inequalities and deficiencies. As an educational researcher from Finland focusing on vocational education, I found there to be many identifiable and useful explanations regarding schooling and reforms. The book is well-written and accessible, which I find inspiring, since educational writing tends to be dry and intended for a small audience of researchers. Maybe it’s too easy to take our education system for granted and not engage a broader audience in conversations about the nature and philosophy of schooling. Tyack & Cuban show that this is not only possible but essential.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand why things work the way they do in public education.

[Mike Klymkowsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear view on educational reform

I found the book extremely valuable in presenting the forces acting on the public education system in the US. Helped me recognize the interplay between educational, learning, and various sociopolitical systems, highlighting various level of potential innovations with the realities of leading students to real understanding.mAnd it is very well written.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Good teachers reinvent the world every day for the children in their classes.” Students almost always remember “the influence of a teacher who challenged them to develop their potential, who made a subject come alive, or who gave caring advice at a stressful time.” For teachers, the purpose of education is to cultivate their students’ growth intellectually and in maturity into the potential with which they were born.

“Schoolhouses are everywhere, a visible emblem of the commitment of the society to make learning accessible to all its young citizens. Schools are familiar places to the adults who once attended them, and…foster public participation in decision making” about what sort of future they desire for the nation as well as for their own children and their immediate community.

I resonated with the notion of “lighthouse schools” that stand out for their leadership and innovation in the educational landscape and I aspire to act as a “lighthouse teacher” at my school Alice Gustafson. Like Alice in Wonderland, I want my classroom to be a place where children fall through the rabbit hole of knowledge, soaking up ideas, stretching their imagination, and testing their talents.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In continuing this tradition of trusteeship of the public good, this engaged debate about the shape of the future [of public education], all citizens have a stake, not only the students who temporarily attend school or their parents. And this is the main reason that Americans long ago created and have continually sought to reform public education."

I'm not sure why this book about education reform in the U.S. was assigned to one of my Finnish education courses, but I couldn't be happier. This book filled the "education policy void" that my courses at Appalachian couldn't fill, and helped me to draw the connections between topics, policies, and tools I learned about in my public policy and public administration courses to the past, present, and future debates surrounding education reform. If you are at all interested in gaining a basic understanding of education policy debates, or the history of public school reform in the United States (something I knew very little about beyond the 1980s), I think this is an essential read!

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating 4/5 books

I feel strange rating a textbook as really it is something I am using for educational purposes and not so much entertainment purposes. I'm currently in a Leadership in Literacy Education class which at this very moment in time is becoming extremely important to be able to have leaders in education that will fight for the access to literacy.

This is a seminal piece of work talking about a hundred years of public school reform. It was written in the early 1990s and the biggest take that I got from this particular book is that everything and nothing has changed in the last 30 odd years since this was written. We make progress and then we regress, and we make progress and then regress. The progress is always smaller inches while the regression takes huge steps back.

It was very sobering to read this and it was a very interesting book to begin the groundwork of what I am studying currently.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

They examine how reforms change schools, and how schools change reform, and argue that incremental rather than radical change is necessary (and that is actually how it has been happening according to their analysis). While it is well presented it does not go into detailed analysis, taking a more macro lens. It counters arguments that schools have not changed, and that radical change is required.

[Jared Cosulich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look at the history of education. It's easy to think that many of the popular ideas for education reform are new, but most have been tried repeatedly in the past. That's not to say they shouldn't be tried again, but it is helpful to see how reform efforts have evolved over the past century.

[Fallon Sweeney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read it for a grad class. Not the most riveting book, I’ve ever read, but it was interesting at times. The most interesting aspect is just how little our educational system has changed in the last 120 years, in many regards.

[Edy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second Tyack book I read. This one was also very interesting and contained great information. This book focused on educational reform, not educational history.

[Maggie Hancock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read it for class and it was written in a pretty dry way, though the subject and content is v interesting overall

[Angela Winter · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of the history of education in the USA with an emphasis on reform movements.

[Connor Oswald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still probably one of the best books for understanding the difficulties that lie within implementing policy from a top-down approach.

[Aaron Schumacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago; I recall it being fairly good.

[Ella NB · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for class.

[Amir Keyvani · Rating 3 out of 5]

در صفحه ای از کتاب از قول آقای هاوارد آمده که:" بسط دادن نمرات دانش آموزان به زمان و فضای زیست آنها باعث شناخت بهتر از ساختار میشود."

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and enlightening, but pretty repetitive. I was hoping it would be a chronological history of public school reform, given the title, but it was not. The authors instead chose selected reforms as examples to prove that teachers should be involved in public school reform. The background on the highlighted reforms was interesting, but altogether as a book, it felt choppy and repetitive, and it didn't really work for me.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just into chapter 3 this week but I'll be finishing it over the weekend. Great summary of how greed and vanity drive public policy rhetoric, how rhetoric is translated into heavily compromised actions, making concessions to the most powerful, and how new policy mandates receive lip service, generate new constituencies, and occasionally generate solutions, and/or more problems. Interesting dissection of the cyclic nature of politics.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was published in 1995, but it gives an excellent background as to why we are in the current state of education reform. It's interesting how some of the reforms that happened 20+ years ago are being pushed again. Since this was published right before the HUGE push towards testing and accountability, it would be interesting if the authors did a follow up chapter.

This is a good read for teachers if you want to feel reassured that the current crazy will eventually pass (hopefully).

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of the cyclical nature of public education reform in America, but you'll have to look elsewhere for the fine details on these particular subjects. In terms of giving you talking points for pro-teacher's union arguments about the perils of curriculum modification, however, this is a go-to source.

[Pam]

This is an excellent textbook. It was used in my Social and Political Determinants of Curriculum class. Educational books are all I have time for these days. This summer I get to take an Appalachian Lit class. I can hardly wait.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting overview of ed reform -- I learned some useful history. I don't totally agree with all the authors' prescriptions, though I'm glad that they're so focused on making sure teachers have a real voice and buy into reform...

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable history of the reforms of education, with a focus on why reforms work or don't work. I found this book, required reading for a course, refreshing. The authors talk about the politics that move reform in education, and the problems inherent in such origins.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting history of the constant attempts to fix education. Bringing concepts of this book up started several arguments, as EVERYONE considers themselves an expert in education. Interesting read for anyone before tinkering with the system.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to read a book about school reform before charter schools get rolling. All the perceived problems and solutions are the same - since the beginning of schools in the U.S. The authors have no idea what's coming.