Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 2)

It would be a grave mistake to think that American reformers only looked at schools as targets for change.

Reforming individual Americans to be better persons has been in the American blood stream since the Mayflower arrived. Ditto for reforming community institutions to be better places within which to live and work.  Perfecting individuals and community institutions while solving problems of urban slums, corrupt city governments, poverty, racial segregation, corporate over-reach, and anemic economic growth has been steady work for reformers. Time and again these reform movements reached far beyond schools. [i]

As predictable as climbing up a ladder to clean leaves from roof gutters every season, reforms have regularly swept across the nation. Since the early 1900s, three overlapping social, political, and economic movements have churned across the U.S. and left marks on government, business, and community institutions, including public schools: The Progressive movement (1900s-1950s), the Civil Rights Struggle (1950s-1970s), and Binding Schools to the Economy (1980s-present). [ii]

 Reform movements 

Each of these political and social movements sought multiple goals one of which included school reform.  Early 20th century Progressives sought to remedy CONTINUE READING: Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 2) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

CURMUDGUCATION: Schools, Supposedly, Have Caused the Fall of US Religion

CURMUDGUCATION: Schools, Supposedly, Have Caused the Fall of US Religion

Schools, Supposedly, Have Caused the Fall of US Religion

The Christian Church has been suffering a steady and rapid decline for a few decades now, a trend noted by many social scientists, and a source of struggle within many churches that are looking for ways to fill newly-emptied pews. You can look at many data sets on the subject. The folks at Pew Research find that there's a stark generational factor; in the Silent Generation and Baby Boomer cohort, those who call themselves Christian are a vast majority (84% and 76% respectively), but only half of Millennials describe themselves as Christian. 

It's a complicated phenomenon, and carries a little existential weight in a country that many folks like to think of as a Christian nation. 

So what's the answer? 

Religion News Service offers ten reasons, including prosperity that distracts people from faith, lack of compelling religious leaders, the end of Sunday as a "protected" church day, and the "wired" world. Many writers point out that US numbers are still higher than European ones. Focus on the Family says it's all okay, because evangelicals are gaining. Ross Douthat at the New York Times kind of agreed, suggesting that it's "lukewarm Christianity" that is declining. Christian Smith, a sociology and religion professor at Notre Dame, pointed at three historical events driving the precipitous post-90s plunge: the end of the Cold War, 9/11, and the political team-up of the GOP and the religious right. Researcher Jean M. Twenge found a sharp drop in religiosity among teens; we might come back to her findings in a moment.

Or maybe we won't bother, because Cameron Hilditch over at the National Review has solved the CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Schools, Supposedly, Have Caused the Fall of US Religion