The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939 [Paperback]

Mr. David F. Labaree (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0300054696 | ISBN-13: 978-0300054699

This prize-winning book analyzes the origins and development of the first public high school in Philadelphia, which became a model for secondary schools elsewhere. Using Central High School as a case study, Labaree argues that the American public high school is the product of the struggle between egalitarianism and meritocracy that is endemic to a democratic society. Winner of the History of Education Society's Outstanding Book Award and co-winner of the American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book Award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (January 29, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300054696
• ISBN-13: 978-0300054699
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #694,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a professor of education at Stanford University who writes about the history and sociology of American education. I have written about the evolution of high schools ("The Making of an American High School," 1988), the growing role of consumerism in education ("How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning," 1997), and the origins and character of schools of education in American universities ("The Trouble With Ed Schools," 2004). Along the way I also published a collection of essays ("Education, Markets, and the Public Good," 2007).

My new book, "Someone Has to Fail," is an essay about the nature of the American system of schooling. We ask the schools to serve contradictory goals - to provide social access and also to preserve social advantage - and they have been willing to comply with our wishes, even though this has undercut their ability to foster academic learning. I explore why school reform has been such a failure over the years, why that's not necessarily such a bad thing, and why the main effects that schools have had on society are the unintended consequences of consumer choices rather than the planned outcomes of reform movements.

Instead of reforming schools, my aim in this book is to explore how the school system developed and how it works - in its own peculiar way. I'm not touting the system or trashing it; I'm simply trying to understand it. And in the process of developing an understanding of this convoluted, dynamic, contradictory, and expensive system, I hope to convey a certain degree of wonder and respect for the way in which this apparent model of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do. In its own way the system is extraordinarily successful, not just because it is so huge and growing so rapidly but because it stands at the heart of the peculiarly American version of the welfare state, providing us with educational opportunity instead of social equality.

For more information, see my website at http://www.stanford.edu/~dlabaree/.