The fifties saw schools as purveyors of international Communism; the sixties attacked the public educational system as racist, mindless, and irrelevant; and the Bicentennial era calls the schools down for their failure to teach students fundamental academic skills. Professor Arthur Newman's book of readings reflects an idea clearly regarded as heretical in many circles--the idea that the American public school is not nearly so inadequate as many present-day critics insist. In order to aid the teacher-to-be, the educator, and the concerned citizen in evaluating the validity of such reproval, Newman has included a wide variety of material, both classic and recent, under the following heads: *The Charge to the Public Schools *The Always-Abundant Criticism *The Schools' Record in Academic Achievement *The Treatment of Minority Group Youngsters *Are the Schools Inflexible? *Public School Teachers *Public Schools and Social Ills *A Critique of the Critics Anyone disturbed about the state of American public education will appreciate Newman's celebration of the myriad strengths of our schools and will esteem the intelligent and responsible perspective he sets forth to evaluate today's criticism of U.S. schools.

Filling a huge void in the history of education, American Public School Librarianship provides essential background information to members of the nation's school library and educational communities who are charged with supervising and managing America's 80,000 public school libraries.

Both conservative and liberal Baby Boomers have romanticized the 1950s as an age of innocence--of pickup ball games and Howdy Doody, when mom stayed home and the economy boomed. These nostalgic narratives obscure many other histories of postwar childhood, one of which has more in common with the war years and the sixties, when children were mobilized and politicized by the U.S. government, private corporations, and individual adults to fight the Cold War both at home and abroad. Children battled communism in its various guises on television, the movies, and comic books; they practiced safety drills, joined civil preparedness groups, and helped to build and stock bomb shelters in the backyard. Children collected coins for UNICEF, exchanged art with other children around the world, prepared for nuclear war through the Boy and Girl Scouts, raised funds for Radio Free Europe, sent clothing to refugee children, and donated books to restock the diminished library shelves of war-torn Europe. Rather than rationing and saving, American children were encouraged to spend and consume in order to maintain the engine of American prosperity. In these capacities, American children functioned as ambassadors, cultural diplomats, and representatives of the United States. Victoria M. Grieve examines this politicized childhood at the peak of the Cold War, and the many ways children and ideas about childhood were pressed into political service. Little Cold Warriors combines approaches from childhood studies and diplomatic history to understand the cultural Cold War through the activities and experiences of young Americans.

This provocative new study of the American high school examines the historical debates about curriculum policy and also traces changes in the institution itself, as evidenced by what students actually studied. Contrary to conventional accounts, the authors argue that beginning in the 1930s, American high schools shifted from institutions primarily concerned with academic and vocational education to institutions mainly focused on custodial care of adolescents. Claiming that these changes reflected educators' racial, class, and gender biases, the authors offer original suggestions for policy adjustments that may lead to greater educational equality for our ever-growing and ever more diverse population of students.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about how schools in America function and what goes on in the typical classroom. Parents, even relatively young parents, perceive that public schools are just like when they attended. This faulty perception is held by a large portion of the general public. In addition a number of aspects of schooling have come under close scrutiny by critics of the public schools, resulting in a heated debate throughout the nation. It is the purpose of this book to provide parents and others who are interested in the operation of public schools an alternative way of looking at publically supported education and the issues surrounding better educational practice. The framework for this volume is the published articles of the author over the past 20 years in his weekly newspaper column, A Different Perspective. While no attempt is made to be comprehensive, the 13 chapters cover a broad range of issues facing the schools. The reader is treated to a fascinating look at the viewpoint of an experienced observer of these public institutions. The author has changed his perspective over the two decades on only a few issues. The book was written with the average reader in mind. It does not contain a large amount of educational jargon, although the issues are approached with enough depth to be useful to the professional educator. Throughout the entire volume the author maintains strong support for public schools.

Is the American public school doing what we want it to do? Or, is what we want it to do in conflict with what society allows it to do? This book takes on issues central to understanding the complexities of the American public school experience. Readers are simultaneously taken into the historical and contemporary context of these issues through an honest and provocative approach that engages them into the real world of school. Chapters revolve around key issues such as religion, democracy, teachers, race, reform, pedagogy, efficiency, freedom, segregation, social class, exceptionality, gender, technology, and accountability. Paradoxes of the Public School promises to foster a thoughtful dialogue on the complexity of school and how best to improve it for the future. Teacher educators may find it useful to help develop teacher candidates’ understanding of the nature of school. However, anyone interested in the nature of school will find this book insightful, clear, and easy to follow. All readers will find this book to be cutting edge as it creatively fills a dire need for a compelling tale of school that is both informative and thought provoking.

Paul Diederich worked in five new organizations dedicated to transforming American schools: the Ohio State University lab school, the Eight Year Study, a Harvard institute to revamp English language instruction, the University of Chicago's Board of Examiners, and the Educational Testing Service. Throughout his career he wrote critiques of American high schools and set forth many proposals to make them more flexible without sacrificing academic excellence. This anthology resurrects 14 Diederich essays, eight of them never before published. The scope ranges from visions of social justice to the details of the daily schedule. Like his heroes Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, he combined a passion for utopian speculation with a fascination for practical problems, a combination that is rare in the world of school reform today.