In this thoughtful, well-wrought study, Charles L. Glenn examines the hisorical development of the idea that the State should sponsor popular education in order to mold common loyalties and values among its citizens in the interest of national unity. This idea had led inevitably to conflict with parents and groups who do not accept the values and beliefs inculcated by the state and its educators. Over the years, the issues around which such conflict has arisen have varied, but the underlying positions remain the same. On the one hand there are those who assert the absolute right of parents to control the education of their children. On the other there are those who assert the absolute right of the State to control the education of children and to do so in a way that minimizes the differences among them. Glenn examines this tension promarily as it evolved in nineteenth-century Massachusetts, with reference to parallel developments elsewhere in the United States and in France and the Netherlands. He ends by reminding us that this continuing conflict over popular education raises troubling questions in a demacracy. How, for example, can the pluralism we claim to value, the liberty we cherish, be reconciled with a State pedagogy designed to serve State purposes? Can governement assure that each child is educated in the essentials required by the social, political, and economic order without seeking to impose uniformity? He concludes by offering workable and tested solutions to this perennial dilemma.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Charles Leslie Glenn, Jr. is professor in the Department of Administration, Training and Policy Studies, and Fellow of the University Professors Program at Boston University.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book on the history of the public school system.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Myth of the Common School (Hardcover)
Author Charles Leslie Glenn believes in the most noble objectives of public schools, but he is careful to think about whether those objectives have been achieved. While he was a state education official in Massachusetts he had unmatched access to archival material about Horace Mann and Mann's efforts to establish compulsory school attendance in the United States. Glenn also uses his knowledge of French and Dutch and his first-hand experience with Europe to provide historical and comparative perspective on what was happening in other countries at the same time the United States made government-operated schools compulsory. The Myth of the Common School is so thoroughly researched that the footnotes alone are worth the price of the book, but the thinking in the book is so original and deep that Glenn helps you learn things none of the earlier authors have put together so clearly and convincingly. A fine book, not to be missed.
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