A Brief History of Reform!
Posted on December 31, 2013 by debmeier
Dear readers,
It’s been a while since I’ve written in this space. But I’ mending my ways.
What set me off? My granddaughter just came across something interesting—and not new. In 2001 PBS put together a video called School: The History of American Public Education. In connection with the film they listed ten significant individuals who had an impact on American public education. And I was one of the ten! It’s an interesting list. It starts with some obvious names: Horace Mann and John Dewey and Booker T. Washington. . And then adds a number of individuals who I didn’t recognize at first. John Joseph Hughes who, as Archbishop of NYC, initiated the widespread development of parochial Catholic schools in the late 19th century; Catherine Beecher who pioneered schooling for women; Ellwood Cubberley who a century ago promoted scientific management of schools; Albert Shanker whose life personified the growth and influence of teacher unionization; Linda Brown Thompson—the Brown of “Brown vs Board of Education”; Jose Angel Gutierrez who as a Texas community organizer led the movement for bilingual education. The final two are E.D. Hirsch, Jr who pioneered the idea of a “common core” curriculum (which is now embodied in DOE policy in 48 states), and me–Deborah Meier! The description of my work suggests that I made an impact by demonstrating how small democratic public schools could successfully educate low-income Black and Latino kids.
What’s interesting is precisely how varied the list of “reformers” is—representing contradictory developments that still have an impact on American public schools. It helps see how the back and forth of our history was responding to changes in society itself and how many different viewpoints have influenced schooling, reflecting its specific time and circumstances. Interesting, the two most recent individual innovators (Hirsh and I) both champion very different approaches, but both do so in the name of furthering democratic ideals. Hirsh focuses on a “common” curriculum as the route to a better society, and has offered his detailed K-12 approach which,