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Someone Has to Fail: the Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling
What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children but all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way this archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do.
Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult.
At the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposes to pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own.
Provocative, unflinching, wry, "Someone Has to Fail" looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much.
Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult.
At the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposes to pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own.
Provocative, unflinching, wry, "Someone Has to Fail" looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2010
34 people are currently reading
890 people want to read
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July 27, 2017
Where this book is particularly good is in making it not only clear what we would like the education system to do – again, this one is set in the US, and so, is only ‘sort of’ relevant to Australia– but also what the education system actually does. Early on the author points out that a large part of the problem with the education system is that it has dual purposes and that these purposes are not only incompatible, but contradictory. As such, the contradiction these purposes present effectively define how the education system will function, why it will never fully meet its objectives in providing social justice and why it will always be defined as ‘failing’.
The central contradiction facing education comes from the uses society (and individuals in society) seek to use it for. One pole of this contradiction is the notion that the main role of education is to provide social improvement in various ways – that is, education has a use value that makes people more productive and more employable because education gives them better skills. It is remarkable how little research there has been done into just how well education achieves these objectives. Which is lucky, because the fact that we take all this as self-evidently obvious is part of the reason the ‘education syndrome’ this author refers to is able to continue on – and ultimately keeps me employed. This ‘use-value’ side of education is also why we seem to think that education is the best means available of addressing all forms of social ills in our society – from drug addiction to poverty to racism to Donald Trump. If education can’t solve these intractable problems, it isn’t clear what can.
The other pole of this contradiction is the ‘exchange value’ purpose of education – that is, the fact we use education as a means to ensure and maintain social advantage – or, at least, those of us with social advantage find ways to deploy education so that their children will retain the social advantages they themselves have enjoyed. You can see the problem here, I assume? It isn’t clear how education can both end social disadvantage while simultaneously maintaining it. And since those who want education to sustain social disadvantage are also those who have the most power in society (not to mention money and contacts and votes that really count) the social reproductive side of the ‘purposes’ of education tends to get stressed more in reality, while the socially inclusive and equalising aspects of education tend to be stressed more in rhetoric.
These different views of the purposes of education have implications that go further than how you might want you children educated when compared to how ‘other people’s children’ should be educated. In Australia, for instance, many private schools charge the annual disposable income of the average wage earner for a single year of tuition – if you are prepared to pay that much to ensure your child does not receive the education that is ‘good enough’ for other people’s children, it is clear you are not interested in the power of education to transform society – but rather its power to reproduce your own advantages.
Education can be seen as either providing children with a broad range of skills they may need so as to be capable and competent members of a democratic society (pretty much what John Dewey was arguing for over 100 years ago when he referred to schools as the incubators of democracy) or they can provide a stamp of approval for employers to signify that those holding certain credentials have the minimum skills necessary to make employing them a reasonable thing to do. The second of these aims makes education a commodity – again, an exchange value – that provides the holder with distinct social advantages.
This faith that education will provide such advantages has lead to what is termed ‘credential inflation’ throughout the 20th century, but particularly post WWII. However, it isn’t at all clear that the higher levels of education that are required today for jobs has improved the ways in which those jobs are performed. Requiring people to have a university degree today for a job that required only to finish high school a generation ago can’t entirely be explained by the raising complexity of most jobs – if only because most jobs have become less complex with raising technological advancements. Rather, the raising requirement for educational credentials is due to the raising availability of those credentials in society generally – if jobs can by lined up according to a kind of ranking system, then who gets those jobs is similarly lined up according to that ranking system – and that ranking is often defined by ‘levels of educational attainment’.
The problem is that those who are already advantaged in the education race are much more likely to remain advantaged – having parents wealthy enough to allow you to stay at school until you are 30, to pay for you to ‘try’ subjects you ‘might’ be interested in, to allow you to try and fail only to try again are options that are simply not available to everyone – and worse, those whose parents never went through the education system before have no ‘roadmap’ to help them guide their children through that system. As Bourdieu says somewhere, the further up the social ladder you are, the less you rely on people you don’t know for advice on how to go forward. Which also means the less likely you are to make missteps, and therefore to have to retrace your steps or (worse still) self-eliminate.
The point is that because we believe in the benefits of education, and believe ‘more’ is always ‘better’ this customer driven desire for more exacerbates the problem – forcing the credentials needed for jobs constantly up and therefore reinforcing the advantages of the already advantaged.
The author makes it clear that this obsession with credentials that will make us employable in the labour market has only ever been one aspect of the ‘purpose’ of education – even though we now see it as the major reason for education, and this speaks to how much of an exchange value education has become – and if you end up owing thousands and thousands of dollars to gain an education, clearly the ‘higher’ and more ‘noble’ aspects of learning will tend to fall by the wayside. Who can afford them?
Nevertheless, the author makes it clear that where American schools have been particularly successful has been in the aspects other than those relating to ‘learning’ per se. America, as he points out, has long been among the ‘also-rans’ when it comes to international comparisons of student attainment – but despite this the US has the world’s largest economy and has long been the powerhouse of economic growth – how are we to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory facts? To which the answer may well be that learning stuff isn’t necessarily what makes an economy great. Perhaps there is a certain level of education of the population at large that is necessary and after that it hardly contributes anything more at all – perhaps what makes an economy great is everyone believing they belong to a society at large. This is interesting, because the US education system has long been quite ‘democratic’ – well, within limits, obviously – no one would choose to go to an urban school in the US, again, obviously, but even here the process of indoctrination that encourages everyone to believe in the American dream, to belong to the ‘great republic’ and so on has been clearly very successful and successful in terms of the US education system first and foremost – you know, USA, USA, USA… repeat…
This sounds cynical, but it is not meant to be as bad as it sounds. As the author points out, if assimilation is important for social cohesion, America schools have ultimately been responsible for this and have been remarkably successful in attaining it.
The author also provides a really useful history of the US education system – one that discusses at length the different purposes that ‘reformers’ have sought to achieve both on the system and via the system. One of the interesting things he says is that it is likely we will continue to have dogmatic, revolutionary and extreme reformers far too convinced of their own beliefs and the benefits that would come from their reforms if only they could implement them in full. And that they will virtually always be wrong and mostly they will fail. Fortunately, one of the greatest bulwarks against such ‘reformers’ is teachers in classrooms. Once they close their doors they often teach in ways that reflect sense, rather than an excess of passion. However, I suspect that many of the policies currently espoused by those who would make teaching teacher proof might be starting to win out against the safe hands of professional teachers – particularly in the schools that educated the poor.
This is a fascinating book – well worth the read and even more so, I suspect, if you are in the US. All the same, any book that stresses the fact education isn’t always quite the unquestioned boon it is assumed to be is worth reading and thinking about.
The central contradiction facing education comes from the uses society (and individuals in society) seek to use it for. One pole of this contradiction is the notion that the main role of education is to provide social improvement in various ways – that is, education has a use value that makes people more productive and more employable because education gives them better skills. It is remarkable how little research there has been done into just how well education achieves these objectives. Which is lucky, because the fact that we take all this as self-evidently obvious is part of the reason the ‘education syndrome’ this author refers to is able to continue on – and ultimately keeps me employed. This ‘use-value’ side of education is also why we seem to think that education is the best means available of addressing all forms of social ills in our society – from drug addiction to poverty to racism to Donald Trump. If education can’t solve these intractable problems, it isn’t clear what can.
The other pole of this contradiction is the ‘exchange value’ purpose of education – that is, the fact we use education as a means to ensure and maintain social advantage – or, at least, those of us with social advantage find ways to deploy education so that their children will retain the social advantages they themselves have enjoyed. You can see the problem here, I assume? It isn’t clear how education can both end social disadvantage while simultaneously maintaining it. And since those who want education to sustain social disadvantage are also those who have the most power in society (not to mention money and contacts and votes that really count) the social reproductive side of the ‘purposes’ of education tends to get stressed more in reality, while the socially inclusive and equalising aspects of education tend to be stressed more in rhetoric.
These different views of the purposes of education have implications that go further than how you might want you children educated when compared to how ‘other people’s children’ should be educated. In Australia, for instance, many private schools charge the annual disposable income of the average wage earner for a single year of tuition – if you are prepared to pay that much to ensure your child does not receive the education that is ‘good enough’ for other people’s children, it is clear you are not interested in the power of education to transform society – but rather its power to reproduce your own advantages.
Education can be seen as either providing children with a broad range of skills they may need so as to be capable and competent members of a democratic society (pretty much what John Dewey was arguing for over 100 years ago when he referred to schools as the incubators of democracy) or they can provide a stamp of approval for employers to signify that those holding certain credentials have the minimum skills necessary to make employing them a reasonable thing to do. The second of these aims makes education a commodity – again, an exchange value – that provides the holder with distinct social advantages.
This faith that education will provide such advantages has lead to what is termed ‘credential inflation’ throughout the 20th century, but particularly post WWII. However, it isn’t at all clear that the higher levels of education that are required today for jobs has improved the ways in which those jobs are performed. Requiring people to have a university degree today for a job that required only to finish high school a generation ago can’t entirely be explained by the raising complexity of most jobs – if only because most jobs have become less complex with raising technological advancements. Rather, the raising requirement for educational credentials is due to the raising availability of those credentials in society generally – if jobs can by lined up according to a kind of ranking system, then who gets those jobs is similarly lined up according to that ranking system – and that ranking is often defined by ‘levels of educational attainment’.
The problem is that those who are already advantaged in the education race are much more likely to remain advantaged – having parents wealthy enough to allow you to stay at school until you are 30, to pay for you to ‘try’ subjects you ‘might’ be interested in, to allow you to try and fail only to try again are options that are simply not available to everyone – and worse, those whose parents never went through the education system before have no ‘roadmap’ to help them guide their children through that system. As Bourdieu says somewhere, the further up the social ladder you are, the less you rely on people you don’t know for advice on how to go forward. Which also means the less likely you are to make missteps, and therefore to have to retrace your steps or (worse still) self-eliminate.
The point is that because we believe in the benefits of education, and believe ‘more’ is always ‘better’ this customer driven desire for more exacerbates the problem – forcing the credentials needed for jobs constantly up and therefore reinforcing the advantages of the already advantaged.
The author makes it clear that this obsession with credentials that will make us employable in the labour market has only ever been one aspect of the ‘purpose’ of education – even though we now see it as the major reason for education, and this speaks to how much of an exchange value education has become – and if you end up owing thousands and thousands of dollars to gain an education, clearly the ‘higher’ and more ‘noble’ aspects of learning will tend to fall by the wayside. Who can afford them?
Nevertheless, the author makes it clear that where American schools have been particularly successful has been in the aspects other than those relating to ‘learning’ per se. America, as he points out, has long been among the ‘also-rans’ when it comes to international comparisons of student attainment – but despite this the US has the world’s largest economy and has long been the powerhouse of economic growth – how are we to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory facts? To which the answer may well be that learning stuff isn’t necessarily what makes an economy great. Perhaps there is a certain level of education of the population at large that is necessary and after that it hardly contributes anything more at all – perhaps what makes an economy great is everyone believing they belong to a society at large. This is interesting, because the US education system has long been quite ‘democratic’ – well, within limits, obviously – no one would choose to go to an urban school in the US, again, obviously, but even here the process of indoctrination that encourages everyone to believe in the American dream, to belong to the ‘great republic’ and so on has been clearly very successful and successful in terms of the US education system first and foremost – you know, USA, USA, USA… repeat…
This sounds cynical, but it is not meant to be as bad as it sounds. As the author points out, if assimilation is important for social cohesion, America schools have ultimately been responsible for this and have been remarkably successful in attaining it.
The author also provides a really useful history of the US education system – one that discusses at length the different purposes that ‘reformers’ have sought to achieve both on the system and via the system. One of the interesting things he says is that it is likely we will continue to have dogmatic, revolutionary and extreme reformers far too convinced of their own beliefs and the benefits that would come from their reforms if only they could implement them in full. And that they will virtually always be wrong and mostly they will fail. Fortunately, one of the greatest bulwarks against such ‘reformers’ is teachers in classrooms. Once they close their doors they often teach in ways that reflect sense, rather than an excess of passion. However, I suspect that many of the policies currently espoused by those who would make teaching teacher proof might be starting to win out against the safe hands of professional teachers – particularly in the schools that educated the poor.
This is a fascinating book – well worth the read and even more so, I suspect, if you are in the US. All the same, any book that stresses the fact education isn’t always quite the unquestioned boon it is assumed to be is worth reading and thinking about.
February 24, 2018
The title of this book is an obvious dig at the now infamous and discredited "No Child Left Behind" legislation. It is an important book with sad news for education reformers: your noble attempts to change American schools are doomed. More to the point, your reformist agenda is wrongly directed at schools in the first place, because all school reform movements since those of the progressives in the early 20th century have failed and no prescriptions contained in current reform efforts offer anything different -- or any hope of success.
Why? There are many reasons, all rooted in our history. The author's basic theme is that schools have come over a century and a half to embody starkly different (and sometimes contradictory) purposes: democratic equality, social efficiency, social mobility, consumer choice. Some want to send their children to be socialized; others desire a purely vocational training that will lead to a job; still others want to acquire educational credentials that will enhance their social mobility and individual prestige. Left out by the author is the main "educational" priority of a very large number of Americans -- namely, athletics, which have nothing whatsoever to do with formal education.
In the USA, school reform is not unlike the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror. Schools, we earnestly believe, can be altered as needed to solve the problems of society: racism, poverty, an ailing economy. But we expect too much, and each new wave of school reform will fail, just as others have failed in the past.
The author discusses at length the major reform movements of the past: the common schools movement of the mid-19th century with its goal of creating citizens who could function effectively in a burgeoning, pre-industrial American democracy (one that was then undergoing wrenching social and economic changes); the progressive movement (which he astutely divides into two strands: the child-centered pedagogues and the administrative progressivists, separate movements whose reformist agendas were not at all complementary) and the more recent standards and accountability movement which we are in the midst of today.
Particularly illuminating is his discussion at the center of the book of what teachers do and how their jobs differ fundamentally from those of other professionals such as doctors, accountants and lawyers. Teachers, he reminds us, are highly autonomous workers with a significant degree of discretion to cultivate effective teaching and learning within their classrooms. Because it takes hard work and time, thoughtful reflection and raw talent to be successful in this line of work, teachers are by definition resistant to the efforts of reformers, whose ideas are dreamed up in places that are far removed from the grunt work that takes place on the front lines at the chalkboard.
Unlike in other countries, in America schools are historically highly independent. Moreover, the "system" (a misnomer, in the author's view) comprises multiple layers that are not interlocked: The federal government, state governments, local school districts, school buildings within the districts, classrooms within the buildings, and finally individual students within the classrooms. Given such a multi-layered and disconnected arrangement of parts, is it any wonder that reform efforts fail to penetrate into classrooms and alter what teachers actually do there?
To do their job well, teachers must negotiate a complex emotional relationship with many different learners, all of whom are conscripts, a compulsory clientele with vastly different levels of engagement in the learning process. The author in many ways is at his best when discussing how it is that teachers walk a delicate line between pushing the curriculum forward and ensuring learning inside their classrooms while simultaneously fostering a positive and nurturing emotional relationship with students.
Administrative progressives at the turn of the last century and all school reformers since then have insisted that schools are critical in the economic progress of the nation. Over and over the same theme is sounded: that economic growth and opportunity cannot be ensured without school reform. This is what the "Twenty-first Century Skills" movement is all about: going to school to learn what it takes to be a successful worker in the American economy. The author goes to great lengths to explain that problems with the American economy really don't have anything to do with the way in which young people are currently being educated in this country.
The author writes with remarkable clarity and vigor. Although he candidly admits his skepticism about the success of school reform movements, the book does not have a polemical tone. I am myself a public high school teacher with two decades of experience and found much of what the author has written to be spot on. Public schools are not unlike other governmental, unionized bureaucracies. School-wide changes that take place from year to year are usually microscopically small and never — at least not in my experience— alter the manner in which basic instruction is delivered inside the classroom.
Why? There are many reasons, all rooted in our history. The author's basic theme is that schools have come over a century and a half to embody starkly different (and sometimes contradictory) purposes: democratic equality, social efficiency, social mobility, consumer choice. Some want to send their children to be socialized; others desire a purely vocational training that will lead to a job; still others want to acquire educational credentials that will enhance their social mobility and individual prestige. Left out by the author is the main "educational" priority of a very large number of Americans -- namely, athletics, which have nothing whatsoever to do with formal education.
In the USA, school reform is not unlike the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror. Schools, we earnestly believe, can be altered as needed to solve the problems of society: racism, poverty, an ailing economy. But we expect too much, and each new wave of school reform will fail, just as others have failed in the past.
The author discusses at length the major reform movements of the past: the common schools movement of the mid-19th century with its goal of creating citizens who could function effectively in a burgeoning, pre-industrial American democracy (one that was then undergoing wrenching social and economic changes); the progressive movement (which he astutely divides into two strands: the child-centered pedagogues and the administrative progressivists, separate movements whose reformist agendas were not at all complementary) and the more recent standards and accountability movement which we are in the midst of today.
Particularly illuminating is his discussion at the center of the book of what teachers do and how their jobs differ fundamentally from those of other professionals such as doctors, accountants and lawyers. Teachers, he reminds us, are highly autonomous workers with a significant degree of discretion to cultivate effective teaching and learning within their classrooms. Because it takes hard work and time, thoughtful reflection and raw talent to be successful in this line of work, teachers are by definition resistant to the efforts of reformers, whose ideas are dreamed up in places that are far removed from the grunt work that takes place on the front lines at the chalkboard.
Unlike in other countries, in America schools are historically highly independent. Moreover, the "system" (a misnomer, in the author's view) comprises multiple layers that are not interlocked: The federal government, state governments, local school districts, school buildings within the districts, classrooms within the buildings, and finally individual students within the classrooms. Given such a multi-layered and disconnected arrangement of parts, is it any wonder that reform efforts fail to penetrate into classrooms and alter what teachers actually do there?
To do their job well, teachers must negotiate a complex emotional relationship with many different learners, all of whom are conscripts, a compulsory clientele with vastly different levels of engagement in the learning process. The author in many ways is at his best when discussing how it is that teachers walk a delicate line between pushing the curriculum forward and ensuring learning inside their classrooms while simultaneously fostering a positive and nurturing emotional relationship with students.
Administrative progressives at the turn of the last century and all school reformers since then have insisted that schools are critical in the economic progress of the nation. Over and over the same theme is sounded: that economic growth and opportunity cannot be ensured without school reform. This is what the "Twenty-first Century Skills" movement is all about: going to school to learn what it takes to be a successful worker in the American economy. The author goes to great lengths to explain that problems with the American economy really don't have anything to do with the way in which young people are currently being educated in this country.
The author writes with remarkable clarity and vigor. Although he candidly admits his skepticism about the success of school reform movements, the book does not have a polemical tone. I am myself a public high school teacher with two decades of experience and found much of what the author has written to be spot on. Public schools are not unlike other governmental, unionized bureaucracies. School-wide changes that take place from year to year are usually microscopically small and never — at least not in my experience— alter the manner in which basic instruction is delivered inside the classroom.
August 16, 2012
To begin, I disagree with reviews about "this book being redundant".
I think this is a very important book, and I think anyone who either works in education, as a teacher or as a policy-dork should read this.
First, Labaree writes very clearly and very well. When you think about educational historians, this alone is an achievement.
Secondly, Labaree's treatment of schools is important, and from my perspective unique. Labaree paints schools as an institutional articulation of who we are as a people, both in our aspirations and in reality. Schools strive to provide (somewhat) equal access to all, while ensuring that the elite have better access. Schools socialize our children, while sorting them by credentialing them. Most interestingly, according to Labaree is that schools are not for learning content, they are for learning how to do school. If you think you disagree with this point, try to think of the last time you solved a quadratic equation.
Labaree provides a historical narrative that traces the American public school movement from its inception to today. He shows compellingly that our school system is the whipping boy for all of our societal woes, especially when people talk about fairness and access. He shows that each time reform attempts have been made, they have generally failed and as a result made education worse.
He also explains why it is that schools cannot fix problems of equality, despite rhetoric, despite TFA, despite unions, despite constructivists, and despite whatever well-meaning, accountability-toting, data-collecting, regression-analyzing reformers try to do - schools cannot, by design fix our country. However, education will always be the catch-all for heated rhetoric and political-wheel spinning, nearly all of which will harm students, despite good intentions.
Again, this is an important book - especially for anyone who cares about education and wants to talk intelligently about it. Labaree's treatment is sensitive, careful, and well-written. It changed the way I think about my job and about the system that I work in.
I'm gonna read it again.
I think this is a very important book, and I think anyone who either works in education, as a teacher or as a policy-dork should read this.
First, Labaree writes very clearly and very well. When you think about educational historians, this alone is an achievement.
Secondly, Labaree's treatment of schools is important, and from my perspective unique. Labaree paints schools as an institutional articulation of who we are as a people, both in our aspirations and in reality. Schools strive to provide (somewhat) equal access to all, while ensuring that the elite have better access. Schools socialize our children, while sorting them by credentialing them. Most interestingly, according to Labaree is that schools are not for learning content, they are for learning how to do school. If you think you disagree with this point, try to think of the last time you solved a quadratic equation.
Labaree provides a historical narrative that traces the American public school movement from its inception to today. He shows compellingly that our school system is the whipping boy for all of our societal woes, especially when people talk about fairness and access. He shows that each time reform attempts have been made, they have generally failed and as a result made education worse.
He also explains why it is that schools cannot fix problems of equality, despite rhetoric, despite TFA, despite unions, despite constructivists, and despite whatever well-meaning, accountability-toting, data-collecting, regression-analyzing reformers try to do - schools cannot, by design fix our country. However, education will always be the catch-all for heated rhetoric and political-wheel spinning, nearly all of which will harm students, despite good intentions.
Again, this is an important book - especially for anyone who cares about education and wants to talk intelligently about it. Labaree's treatment is sensitive, careful, and well-written. It changed the way I think about my job and about the system that I work in.
I'm gonna read it again.
November 24, 2016
The shocking part is that the observations of this book also apply to the European school systems, both Eastern and Western which both have nothing to do with freedom and autonomy.
Read
April 25, 2025(For school) This is a really interesting book about why educational reform isn't working to solve social problems (or to better educate our kids) and why we keep trying anyway. Ultimately, Labaree seems to think we will never solve the problems with the public school system, and he thinks that's a good thing. There are lots of interesting arguments and lots of helpful historical context. But he seems to think his readers are incapable of following his argument, and so he makes every point about 6 times. Probably the whole thing could have been an essay.
June 12, 2023
tough to get through but a lot of interesting ideas about the american schooling system
June 25, 2011
Despite being unecessarily repetitive, at times it felt like the author had compiled his best university lectures, verbatim, including the ten minutes of recap from the last lecture, "just to remind everyone where we left off," I found the author's argument to be very through and even handed. I appreciated his willingness to be critical of each movement within the evolution of our educational system and to examine the consequences of the decision making that has lead to our current system. I can also honestly say his writngs have strengthen my faith in homeschooling. I don't need state mandated warehousing of my children.
August 10, 2024
A good book that could have been a great article. It's repetitive in a way that makes you wonder whether multiple papers have been stitched together, and not all sections are equally rigorous.
Despite that, I'm glad I read this. The central thesis about education as a private good or a public good, and how our rhetoric ignores the way those two are at odds, is worthwhile. I feel like I have some useful new frameworks for thinking about this subject. Appreciated the historical sections too, at least the first time.
Despite that, I'm glad I read this. The central thesis about education as a private good or a public good, and how our rhetoric ignores the way those two are at odds, is worthwhile. I feel like I have some useful new frameworks for thinking about this subject. Appreciated the historical sections too, at least the first time.
July 31, 2015
While I found parts of the book to be repetitive, overall, Labaree's systematic approach to explaining the history of the American public school system and the series of reform movements is easy to follow and easy to understand. I can sense his pessimism throughout the book - he does not see merit in the current or previous reform movements.
I definitely see his points about the overwhelming complexity of the American schooling system and therefore understand the near impossibility of reforming the system to conform to our 'wants,' especially since those differ between individuals and philosophical groups... this is definitely problematic.
I think my favorite part of the book was his fresh outlook on American vs other countries' schooling. Most of what I have heard has been along the lines of the film "20 Million Minutes," which Labaree discusses, essentially comparing other countries' more rigorously academic schooling systems (focused on content) to America's less rigorous system (focused on form) and framing this difference in a dangerous light. "America is falling behind!" seems to be the prevailing message. Labaree, however, sees America's focus on form over content to be beneficial and even practical for preparing students for our economic system and for working life in America. I appreciate this approach, although I'm not sure if I completely agree. Very interesting book overall.
I definitely see his points about the overwhelming complexity of the American schooling system and therefore understand the near impossibility of reforming the system to conform to our 'wants,' especially since those differ between individuals and philosophical groups... this is definitely problematic.
I think my favorite part of the book was his fresh outlook on American vs other countries' schooling. Most of what I have heard has been along the lines of the film "20 Million Minutes," which Labaree discusses, essentially comparing other countries' more rigorously academic schooling systems (focused on content) to America's less rigorous system (focused on form) and framing this difference in a dangerous light. "America is falling behind!" seems to be the prevailing message. Labaree, however, sees America's focus on form over content to be beneficial and even practical for preparing students for our economic system and for working life in America. I appreciate this approach, although I'm not sure if I completely agree. Very interesting book overall.
January 2, 2018
I read this book for David Labaree's History of School Reform class. Overall, I deeply agree with the ideas presented in it.
The book argues that schools were founded to create a common experience for America's school children, a public good, but that the rhetoric around schooling has over time justified it as an economic engine and also a tool for social mobility. Despite how deeply people believe in both of those goals, there is little evidence to suggest that schooling is able to accomplish those things. And every time access to schooling is broadened, families with means simply push the bar higher to maintain their privilege.
This book and the class more broadly have coalesced my belief that schools should be left to individual communities, and that it is perhaps the communities around a school that need to be helped, not the school itself.
It's clear that schools are not the one-stop problem-solving shop that we continually expect them to be. Housing segregation, healthcare availability, parenting training, nutritional needs, and so much more need to be addressed by institutions other than the school to make America a more equitable society. The real question for me is what this means I should do with my own time and talents to make schooling better--perhaps work in a single school.
The book argues that schools were founded to create a common experience for America's school children, a public good, but that the rhetoric around schooling has over time justified it as an economic engine and also a tool for social mobility. Despite how deeply people believe in both of those goals, there is little evidence to suggest that schooling is able to accomplish those things. And every time access to schooling is broadened, families with means simply push the bar higher to maintain their privilege.
This book and the class more broadly have coalesced my belief that schools should be left to individual communities, and that it is perhaps the communities around a school that need to be helped, not the school itself.
It's clear that schools are not the one-stop problem-solving shop that we continually expect them to be. Housing segregation, healthcare availability, parenting training, nutritional needs, and so much more need to be addressed by institutions other than the school to make America a more equitable society. The real question for me is what this means I should do with my own time and talents to make schooling better--perhaps work in a single school.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 3, 2012
Labaree argues that it is the form, not the content, of schooling that is most important and most effective in achieving the social goals of the education system. He discusses at length what he calls the "education syndrome," or "educationalizing" as a means of trying to fix social problems, and how the education system is simply not suited to accomplish such goals. The system is not suitable in part because of the constant tension between access and advantage; we believe in equal access to education, but also desire for ourselves and our children a competitive edge through credentialing that will give us a leg up on our peers. In addition, he says that education markets/consumers are what drive change in education, not education reform movements. The "zero-sum game" to which he refers is mainly one of social mobility and social efficiency: if one person gets ahead, that means that another has fallen behind, and the public is no better off than it was before. What we see in education today, Labaree argues, is a system primarily driven by education consumers and therefore focused on the private, not public, good. His writing is clear and accessible, and he provides here an excellent and critical history of education reform in the U.S. Top notch!
August 28, 2012
David Labaree, an education historian at Stanford, argues that the reason education reform has been relatively unsuccessful is that we are asking our schools to do two very different things. One, we want public education to equitably serve the masses, a democratic ideal remaining from the common school era, when schools were intended for socializing waves of immigrants. But, this is largely incompatible with the second thing we want out of our schools, which is to serve as a vehicle for personal achievement and social mobility. Recounting the history of public education and education reform efforts in America, Labaree ultimately argues that we cannot have it all; we cannot simultaneously achieve sound reform while continuing to be individual consumers of public schooling.
On the whole, I found Labaree's argument to be compelling, and certainly very politically relevant, though he does not take any political stance. The book grew out of a course he teaches at Stanford, but it's accessible enough, I think, for anybody to read.
On the whole, I found Labaree's argument to be compelling, and certainly very politically relevant, though he does not take any political stance. The book grew out of a course he teaches at Stanford, but it's accessible enough, I think, for anybody to read.
March 29, 2021
This is a fascinating book about US public schools and I was a huge fan right up to the end, when Labaree lost me a little. My husband teaches at a prep school, and I worked in administration for a large public school district for over ten years. So this book was not only interesting, but largely (with one exception) rang very true.
The author proceeds in four parts. The first is a history of the public school movement from prior to the founding of the nation to nearly the present day (2010). The second is a description of how public schools work (for students, teachers, parents, administrators, and reformers who are often in higher education and politics) and how and why that is pretty incompatible with reform. The third section is about each of the main reform movements (or form and reform movements, more precisely) and what we can observe and learn from them. The final section is the author's arguments (though they creep into the third section) about why school reform doesn't work and why we should give it up.
The first two sections are terrific, I learned a lot, and it all rang 100% true. Essentially, schooling has a history of expansion. This expansion is to include more and more students, and to include higher and higher levels - not achievement, but high school, college, graduate school, and doctorates. Functions that in early America were largely accomplished at home (basic literacy, numeracy) and in the workplace through apprenticeships ("getting ahead") were transferred to school when apprenticeships went away and/or upward mobility in the workplace became a matter of job change rather than increasing skill and reputation and amassing funds to open your own shop. School also solidified our nationhood by inculcating some civic knowledge and values, and a shared experience, among young citizens. And schools are "loosely coupled" to administration, and even more so to reformers. Public schools, under control of the state, are at arm's length from reformers (in higher ed and Washington), but even more so schools are at arm's length from central administrators in central offices and even classroom teachers are at arm's length from their principal (and behind a closed door to boot!). This makes reform quite difficult.
The third section is also great when it focuses on history of reforms - from the founding of schools to create citizenry, to reform to replace functions lost during the industrial revolution, to civil rights movement school reform, to present-day school choice and standards movements. Clearly schooling works well in some regards and much less well in others. Labaree points out that this is due to competing powers - reformers who want school to serve a "common good" that might be providing trained workers, economic growth, or common knowledge pitted against consumers who want their children to get ahead and are more interested in school elements like rank and credentials that distinguish some from others.
The third section makes a point that schooling is more about process or "doing school" than learning anything in particular. Earning the credential is more important than any specific knowledge gained. This is arguably quite true for some types of education (liberal arts education and elite education come to mind). And maybe that's where the author comes from and where his head is at. But it rang very false and jarringly so for the value of schooling. Your specific grades and your specific knowledge might not be critical, but that isn't the same as having learned nothing. And content knowledge is clearly key at some point for much pre-professional education - engineering, medicine including nursing and the health sciences, and sector-focused management fields all come to mind. Those who merely pass get the same degree as those who get an average - sub honors - grade. But you have to learn something to earn a credential , you have to have read some books and written some papers to get a degree in English, Latin, history, Arabic, or math or biology or physics. As a math teacher friend put it, students from different schools are like random slices of swiss cheese, they all have holes in different places. But there's still a lot of cheese! I agree with an argument that standards-based learning misses a huge point that learning or "doing school" is more than a checklist of content. And I agree with pointing out that the credential is more significant and valuable than learning in our society. College drop-outs who had financial reasons for withdrawal (a lot of them) don't get any credit for what they learned. But that isn't the same as saying learning (or content knowledge) doesn't matter. No one got a PhD because their parents bought it for them. Maybe there's another whole book in the distinction, but the hammering of this point turned the book from a fascinating and meticulously organized and presented case based in facts into a descent into a polemic.
The end is the final argument about why reform doesn't work, why consumers fight against reform and why they and not reformers are successful. Essentially consumers have money, and money talks. And America is based on individualism rather than structural and collective improvement. A lot of money is spent on school reform, and equitable access to school for people without money. The author argues that the former is wasted effort as it can't work (see "loosely coupled" above) - I am convinced this is true, and that it should be stopped. And the consumers will battle the latter with an arms race to keep their kids ahead leading to escalating costs - I am convinced this is true, but would still hope that we can find a less costly solution that provides access to a powerful vehicle for individual upward mobility. But that would be a structural solution, something that seems unlikely in America as it is currently constituted. Ultimately, I learned a lot from this book (as one does!) and would recommend it to anyone working in public or private education.
The author proceeds in four parts. The first is a history of the public school movement from prior to the founding of the nation to nearly the present day (2010). The second is a description of how public schools work (for students, teachers, parents, administrators, and reformers who are often in higher education and politics) and how and why that is pretty incompatible with reform. The third section is about each of the main reform movements (or form and reform movements, more precisely) and what we can observe and learn from them. The final section is the author's arguments (though they creep into the third section) about why school reform doesn't work and why we should give it up.
The first two sections are terrific, I learned a lot, and it all rang 100% true. Essentially, schooling has a history of expansion. This expansion is to include more and more students, and to include higher and higher levels - not achievement, but high school, college, graduate school, and doctorates. Functions that in early America were largely accomplished at home (basic literacy, numeracy) and in the workplace through apprenticeships ("getting ahead") were transferred to school when apprenticeships went away and/or upward mobility in the workplace became a matter of job change rather than increasing skill and reputation and amassing funds to open your own shop. School also solidified our nationhood by inculcating some civic knowledge and values, and a shared experience, among young citizens. And schools are "loosely coupled" to administration, and even more so to reformers. Public schools, under control of the state, are at arm's length from reformers (in higher ed and Washington), but even more so schools are at arm's length from central administrators in central offices and even classroom teachers are at arm's length from their principal (and behind a closed door to boot!). This makes reform quite difficult.
The third section is also great when it focuses on history of reforms - from the founding of schools to create citizenry, to reform to replace functions lost during the industrial revolution, to civil rights movement school reform, to present-day school choice and standards movements. Clearly schooling works well in some regards and much less well in others. Labaree points out that this is due to competing powers - reformers who want school to serve a "common good" that might be providing trained workers, economic growth, or common knowledge pitted against consumers who want their children to get ahead and are more interested in school elements like rank and credentials that distinguish some from others.
The third section makes a point that schooling is more about process or "doing school" than learning anything in particular. Earning the credential is more important than any specific knowledge gained. This is arguably quite true for some types of education (liberal arts education and elite education come to mind). And maybe that's where the author comes from and where his head is at. But it rang very false and jarringly so for the value of schooling. Your specific grades and your specific knowledge might not be critical, but that isn't the same as having learned nothing. And content knowledge is clearly key at some point for much pre-professional education - engineering, medicine including nursing and the health sciences, and sector-focused management fields all come to mind. Those who merely pass get the same degree as those who get an average - sub honors - grade. But you have to learn something to earn a credential , you have to have read some books and written some papers to get a degree in English, Latin, history, Arabic, or math or biology or physics. As a math teacher friend put it, students from different schools are like random slices of swiss cheese, they all have holes in different places. But there's still a lot of cheese! I agree with an argument that standards-based learning misses a huge point that learning or "doing school" is more than a checklist of content. And I agree with pointing out that the credential is more significant and valuable than learning in our society. College drop-outs who had financial reasons for withdrawal (a lot of them) don't get any credit for what they learned. But that isn't the same as saying learning (or content knowledge) doesn't matter. No one got a PhD because their parents bought it for them. Maybe there's another whole book in the distinction, but the hammering of this point turned the book from a fascinating and meticulously organized and presented case based in facts into a descent into a polemic.
The end is the final argument about why reform doesn't work, why consumers fight against reform and why they and not reformers are successful. Essentially consumers have money, and money talks. And America is based on individualism rather than structural and collective improvement. A lot of money is spent on school reform, and equitable access to school for people without money. The author argues that the former is wasted effort as it can't work (see "loosely coupled" above) - I am convinced this is true, and that it should be stopped. And the consumers will battle the latter with an arms race to keep their kids ahead leading to escalating costs - I am convinced this is true, but would still hope that we can find a less costly solution that provides access to a powerful vehicle for individual upward mobility. But that would be a structural solution, something that seems unlikely in America as it is currently constituted. Ultimately, I learned a lot from this book (as one does!) and would recommend it to anyone working in public or private education.
October 11, 2012
Labaree opens by observing that "We Americans have long pinned our hopes on education." He reexamines the overblown nature of those hopes in a hard analytical and literate way. His account of educational history (well, school history) is very useful, and it supports his core conclusion: "Don't pursue gosls that schools can't accomplish (247)." My background is as a teacher (secondary and college): my educational history is as an educational historian. My school board experience is enriched by his approach.
February 13, 2013
This book provides excellent and important insights into the history of education in America. The author did not convince me as to the validity of his basic premise which is that the educational system has consistently failed to achieve social goals that have been set for it.
May 19, 2014
The title doesn't really do justice to the depth of thought and analysis in this book. This isn't a school-bashing manifesto, but a nuanced and thoughtful view of school, school reform, and the limits of both in the United States.
December 17, 2015
It's a good history and very informative. I liked the content a lot. It's a tough read to get through, though. His writing style comes off as pedantic and verbose at times, which causes me to lose focus.
Want to read
June 25, 2012Main LA212 .L33 2010
Want to read
December 1, 2015Interesting so far, but kinda reads like a textbook.
April 4, 2018
'Scale down your ambitions' -Advice on education reform
March 6, 2025
Ouch.
This was a good, quick read. Sections of the novel were repetitive, but the author did a good job linking ideas together.
The ouch is for the state of education and how it is flawed and will probably never be fixed. Yet, although it is far from perfect and in a constant state of playing catchup with the times and society, there is hope lying with the teachers educating as a way of paying it forward and trying to make the world a better place.
This was a good, quick read. Sections of the novel were repetitive, but the author did a good job linking ideas together.
The ouch is for the state of education and how it is flawed and will probably never be fixed. Yet, although it is far from perfect and in a constant state of playing catchup with the times and society, there is hope lying with the teachers educating as a way of paying it forward and trying to make the world a better place.
November 13, 2024
DNF. The book was so repetitive. His main point was that schools don't succeed in reform because they're trying to do too many things to please too many people. The way he made that point was incredibly confusing.
July 18, 2024
If I didn’t have to read this for a class I would’ve never read it. I was confused the whole time and it’s only cause my stress.
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