The+One+Best+System


 * pReturn to Reading Response and Discussion**


 * __Prologue:__**

__**Summary:**__ The prologue discusses what the book is about, and its different parts. The book assesses how the schools were shaped by the transformation of the United States into an urban, industrial nation. When corporations started blooming, and you needed an education for a decent job, and child labor laws were enforced, the urban school system changed. The book also discusses the idea of “taking politics” out of schools.The book is broken up into the following parts: Parts two and three of the book are about the complex contest between educational leaders and political interests. Part four touches on the idea of reform of urban education. Part five informs the readers about the major changes in urban education and the effects of cutting child labor laws. Finally, the epilogue takes a look at the crisis of urban education, in light of structures, power of relationships and idealology.

__**Key Passages:**__ "This is an interpretive history of the organizational revolution that took place in American schooling during the last century. It deals with the politics of education: who got what, where, when and how. It explores some of the changes in institutional structures and ideology in education and what these may have meant in practice to the generations of Americans who passed through classrooms. And it attempts to assess how the schools shaped, and were shaped by, the transformation of the United States into an urban-industrial nation." Page 3

"I am addressing this study not only to specialists but also to citizens curious and concerned about how we arrived at the present crisis in urban education. We stand at a point in time when we need to examine those educational institutions and values we have taken for granted. We need to turn facts into puzzles in order to perceive alternatives both in the past and in the present. The way we understand that past profoundly shapes how we make choices today." Page 4

"Thoughtful educators--men like Horace Mann, William T. Harris, John Dewey, among others--were aware that the functions of schooling were shifting in response to those “modernizing” forces. As village patterns merged into urbanism as a way of life, factories and counting houses split the place of work from the home; impersonal and codified roles structured relationships in organization, replacing diffuse and personal role relationships familiar in the village; the jack-of-all-trades of the rural community came to perform specialized tasks in the city; the older reliance on tradition and folkways as guides to belief and conduct shifted as mass media provided new sources of information and norms of behavior and as science became a pervasive source of authority; people increasingly defined themselves as members of occupational groups--salesmen, teachers, engineers--as they became aware of common interests that transcended allegiance to particular communities, thus constituting what Robert Weibe calls 'the new middle class.'" Page 5-6

"Critics are so intent on exposing the racism and obtuseness of the teacher that it is difficult to understand her view of the world. Like welfare workers and police, teachers in the urban colonies of the poor are part of a social system that shapes //their// behavior too. It is more important to expose and correct the injustice of the social system than to scold its agents. Indeed, one of the chief reasons for the failures of educational reforms in the past has been precisely that they called for a change of philosophy or tactics on the part of the individual school employee rather than systematic change--and concurrent transformations in the distribution of power and wealth in the society as a whole." Page 10-11

"The search for the one best system has ill-served the pluralistic character of american society. Increasing bureaucratization of urban schools has often resulted in a displacement of goals and has often perpetuated positions and outworn practices rather than serving the clients, the children to be taught. Despite frequent good intentions and abundant rhetoric about "equal educational opportunity," schools have rarely taught the children of the poor effectively- and this failure has been systematic, not idiosyncratic. Talk about "keeping the schools out of politics" has often served to obscure actual alignments of power and patterns of privilege. Americans have often perpetuated social injustice by blaming the victim, particularly in the case of instituational racism." Page 11

“… I am using “village and “urban” as shorthand labels for the highly complex changes in ways of thinking and behaving that accompanied revolutions in technology, increasing concentrations of people in cities, and restructuring of economic and politic institution into large bureaucracies. Thoughtful educators …were aware that the functions of schooling were shifting in response to these “modernizing’ forces. As village patterns merged into urbanism as a way of life, factories and counting houses split the place of work from home; impersonal and codified roles of structured relationships in organizations, replacing diffuse and personal role relationships familiar in the village; the jack- of all trades of the rural community came to perform specialized tasks in the city; the older reliance pm tradition and folkways as guides to belief and conduct shifted as mass media provided new sources of information and norms of behavior and as science became a pervasive source of authority; people increasingly defined themselves as members of occupational groups- salesman, teachers, engineers- as they became aware of common interest that transcended allegiance to particular communities thus constituting what Robert Wiebe calls the “middle class”. Page 5

“… In the twentieth century, in particular, it became clear to many observers that small towns were becoming intertwined with the networks of influence that emanated from the centers of mass society, the cities, whole cities continued to recruit citizens from isolated rural areas where the traditional folkways were still strong. The important point is that increasingly the changes in decision-making and in ways of thinking and acting that I have labeled “urban” became central in the lives of most Americans.” “As employers and educational associations placed even greater reliance on education credentials for jobs, schooling acquired a new importance as the gateway to favored positions. And increasingly the school developed a curriculum, overt and implicit, that served as a bridge between the family and the organizational world beyond- that is, helped to create an urban discipline.”


 * __Important Terminology and Figures:__**


 * perforce** **-** by necessity; by force of circumstance pg 4
 * dispossessed** - alienated, without property pg 4
 * plethora** - excess pg 4
 * urban school**- modernized schools pg 5
 * village school**- traditional schools is rural areas pg 5
 * rhetoric-** exaggeration pg 11
 * idiosyncratic**- a characteristic, habit, mannerism, or the like, that is peculiar to an individual pg 11
 * Centralization (1890- 1920)-** reform that characterized urban education from the views of businesses and professional men, university presidents and professors who campaigned to select boards of “successful” people to employ the board of directors as the model for school committees to make the powerful decisions concerning schools.


 * __Discussion Guiding Questions:__**


 * How do you think we change our system of education, so that it does not breed prejudice and injustice?**


 * How can schools make a difference in our society?**