Product Description
The One Best System a major new interpretation of what actually happened in the development of one of America’s most influential institutions. At the same time it is a narrative in which the participants themselves speak out: farm children and factory workers, frontier teachers and city superintendents, black parents and elite reformers. And it encompasses both the achievements and the failures of the system: the successful assimilation of immigrants, racism and c… More >>
Tyack is the master of educational history. To know where we are, we must know where we have been. No student of education should graduate without reading this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
David Tyack—like so many past and present government school critics—sees the problems and describes them well.
However, he fails to see the solution: get government out of schooling. That is, go to free-market education.
One delightful part of his description of the olden’ days is this gem:
“To many schoolmen, lay decision-making at its best tended to be inefficient meddling in the proper province of the expert; at its worst, the school system became just another source of patronage and graft to boodlers. L.H. Jones, superintendent of schools in Cleveland, complained in 1896 that ‘the unscrupulous politician is the worst enemy that we now have to contend with in public education.’” (page 79)
Also, I think the review by B Lack is superb.
Rating: 4 / 5
I was looking for a historical framework to view my community’s local educational history. This book has been an outstanding aid in this effort. I live in the South where the education systems contain both urban and rapidly urbanizing schools and tend to be more consolidated organizationally. My state’s and local events were known but this book brought them into context for me.
I wish this book has been one of the texts used in my history of urban schools class and have since recommended it to my university.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is an easy and interesting read about the history of American public education from the perspectives of those who lived it. Much is based on the writings of people in education – letters, diaries, editorials, etc. I was saddened by how similar some of the issues in the early 1900’s are to current issues. Teachers complaining about standardized tests; struggles with how to deal with immigration; what to do about poor behavior. When read in concert with current writings, I think it will leave the impression that we are rarely progressive when it comes to public education in this country.
Rating: 4 / 5
Every urban parent and teacher wonders why it is SO difficult to create good urban schools. Funding is certainly an issue, but something else seems to be wrong, something bigger and more unchangeable. Read this book, and you will find the answer: Urban schools were organized this way on purpose. They were structured to be impersonal, bureaucratic, and unequal.
Great book. Tyack ranks as one of the best U.S. historians.
Rating: 5 / 5