Books by "David B. Tyack"
5 books found
The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man." Education for Extinction offers the first comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments, relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance. Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision. Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically. Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
Education and the Great Depression: Lessons from a Global History examines the history of schools in terms of pedagogies, curricula, policies, and practices at the point of intersection with worldwide patterns of economic crisis, political instability, and social transformation. Examining the Great Depression in the historical contexts of Egypt, Turkey, Germany, Brazil, and New Zealand and in the regional contexts of the United States, including Virginia, New York City, Cleveland, Chicago, and South Carolina, this collection broadens our understanding of the scope of this crisis while also locating more familiar American examples in a global framework.
Despite being the centerpiece of rural educational reform for most of the twentieth century, rural school consolidation has received remarkably little scholarly attention. The social history and geography of the movement, the widespread resistance it provoked, and the cultural landscapes its proponents sought to transform have remained largely unexplored. Now in There Goes the Neighborhood David Reynolds remedies this situation by examining the rural school consolidation movement in that most midwestern of midwestern states, Iowa. From 1912 to 1921, Iowa was the center of national attention as state and local education leaders attempted to implement a new model of rural education, intended to be emulated throughout the rest of the Midwest. As part of the Country Life movement—whose leaders sought to create a more modern future for farm families, an alternative form of rural community that combined the advantages of both city and country—the initially successful model collapsed in the early twenties, not to be revived until after World War II. Reynolds focuses on how and why rural school consolidation was so vigorously resisted in most of Iowa, why it failed in the twenties, and what its lasting consequences have been. Combining social and oral history, modern social theory, historical geography, and ethnography, There Goes the Neighborhood is the most authoritative analysis to date of the politics, geography, and social history of rural school consolidation in any state.
From the 1890s through World War II, the greatest hopes of American progressive reformers lay not in the government, the markets, or other seats of power but in urban school districts and classrooms. The Importance of Being Urban focuses on four western school systems—in Denver, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle—and their efforts to reconfigure public education in the face of rapid industrialization and the perceived perils [GDA1] of the modern city. In an era of accelerated immigration, shifting economic foundations, and widespread municipal shake-ups, reformers argued that the urban school district could provide the broad blend of social, cultural, and educational services needed to prepare students for twentieth-century life. These school districts were a crucial force not only in orchestrating educational change, but in delivering on the promise of democracy. David A. Gamson’s book provides eye-opening views of the histories of American education, urban politics, and the Progressive Era.
Reforming the Reform
by Susan L. Moffitt, Michaela Krug O'Neill, David K. Cohen
2023 · University of Chicago Press
"School reforms are almost always born out of big dreams and a well-meaning desire to change the status quo-the American education system as we know it was the product of such a reform. But between the lawmakers who spearhead these changes and the students whose education is at stake, there are countless teachers, principals, administrators, and local politicians and, correspondingly, countless ways that things can go sideways. In Reforming the Reform, political scientist Susan Moffitt, education scholar Michaela O'Neill, and the late policy and education scholar David K. Cohen take on a wide-ranging examination of the nitty-gritty of school reform. They focus especially on mezzo-level actors: but the countless school superintendents, principals, and teachers figuring out how to apply a new policy in the unique context of their district or school. They conducted more than 250 interviews with mezzo-level administrators in Tennessee and California (chosen as contrasts for their different political makeup and centralization of the education system) between 2016 and 2020, ending their data collection as schools were going virtual at the beginning of the pandemic. They also collected survey data from across the US. Finally, they turned to archival data dating to the earliest American educational reform: the creation of a centralized national education policy. Taken together, this data demonstrates an impressive ambition: to identify common problems that arise when a general policy is implemented in a local context. The framework provides a general explanation for problems facing social policy reforms in federalist systems (including healthcare) and offers pathways forward for education policy in particular"--