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Dollars and Dreams: Classrooms as Fictitious Message Systems, 1790–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Barbara Finkelstein
Barbara Finkelstein*
Affiliation:
International Center for the Study of Education Policy and Human Values, University of Maryland, College Park
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Extract

Contemporary Americans are experiencing an orgy of anxiety over material matters. There are books announcing the imminent demise of American economic supremacy in the world. There are prophets of doom announcing that material resources are dwindling and/or being appropriated by foreign nationals seeking to dominate our land. There is a national lament over the quality of work being done in the nation's manufactories, and there is a sense of moral outrage over the work habits of American laborers. There is high distress over the intellectual qualities of the nation's youth, and there is an outpouring of reports calling America's teachers to task. The calls for educational reform are not calls for justice or equality, but for technological productivity, military superiority, economic dominance, and cultural supremacy. Ironically, the reports call on schools to enhance the economic position of the United States, while urging a retreat from vocational emphases in the schools. Many calls for reform advocate new alliances among industry, government, and public schools, but champion a return to a traditional core curriculum or the imposition of national examinations as a solution.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 463 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1. Contemporary calls for education reform are found in a dazzling number of government documents, newspaper articles, scholarly pieces, and education policy proposals. For a sample of the most influential see: National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C., 1983); Education Commission of the States, Action for Excellence: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Our Nation's Schools (Washington, D.C., 1983); Making the Grade: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Policy (New York, 1983); National Science Foundation, Educating Americans for the Twenty-First Century: A Plan of Action for Improving Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education for all American Elementary and Secondary Students So That Their Achievement Is the Best in the World by 1995 (Washington, D.C., 1983); Education and Economic Progress toward a National Education Policy: The Federal Role (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

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