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posted by:
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George Hein
on May 22, 2003
at 10:49AM
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subject:
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historcial perspectives
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Historical perspectives are tricky, as we all know. In the history of
schooling we always have to balance the development of the activity
(curriculum, teaching methods, etc.) with the audience-who was going to
school. There’s no question that the curriculum has gotten less
rigorous over the past 100 years. But, at the same time, the
percentage of students from the whole population going to school has
increased. Many of those fishermen’s’ kids 100 years ago didn’t
graduate. And dropping out of school wasn’t the end of economic
opportunity.
Sure, if we point to the formal curriculum we may miss the "good old
days" but the great American experiment of assuring all children a
common education through high school hasn’t really been carried out
yet. Up to the Second World War, half the kids didn’t go to high
school, and today we have only 3/4th of the students graduating from
high school. We’re still trying to get the basic idea of a democratic
education for all into place.
That takes a great social and political commitment. It doesn’t help
when critics keep telling us that the schools are "failing". It’s
truer that the society is failing to support public education and the
extraordinary work that teachers and administrators do every day.
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