The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education

Description

The One Best System presents a major new interpretation of what actually happened in the development of one of America's most influential institutions. At the same time it is a narrative in which the participants themselves speak out: farm children and factory workers, frontier teachers and city superintendents, black parents and elite reformers. And it encompasses both the achievements and the failures of the system: the successful assimilation of immigrants, racism and class bias; the opportunities offered to some, the injustices perpetuated for others. David Tyack has placed his colorful, wide-ranging view of history within a broad new framework drawn from the most recent work in history, sociology, and political science. He looks at the politics and inertia, the ideologies and power struggles that formed the basis of our present educational system. Using a variety of social perspectives and methods of analysis, Tyack illuminates for all readers the change from village to urban ways of thinking and acting over the course of more than one hundred years. Dedication Acknowledgments Contents List of Illustrations Prologue Part I: The One Best System in Microcosm: Community and Consolidation in Rural Education Part II: From Village School to Urban System: Bureaucratization in the Nineteenth Century Part III: The Politics of Pluralism: Nineteenth-Century Patterns Part IV: Centralization and the Corporate Model: Contests for Control of Urban Schools, 1890–1940 Part V: Inside the System: The Character of Urban Schools, 1890–1940 Epilogue: The One Best System under Fire, 1940–1973 Notes Bibliography Index