William G. Wraga

Social Class Analysis in the Early Progressive Tradition

ABSTRACTMany of the progressive-liberal thinkers central to the development of the field of curriculum studies have been criticized for failing to provide a substantive social class analysis of public schooling. Much of this criticism originated from leftist commentators, aimed directly at prominent figures like John Dewey, Harold Rugg, John Childs, Jesse Newlon, and Ralph Tyler. In this paper, however, the contrary position is taken. We argue that prominent progressive thinkers in the field of curriculum viewed the explanation of social inequities in relation to schooling was vitally important to curriculum considerations. Progressive-experimentalists in particular are described using their criticisms of class division and economic injustice in the society to assert the need for more directed efforts at developing social consciousness and social insight in the school. At the same time, the social class analysis provided by many progressives was not charged with ideological rhetoric about waging political...

The Progressive Vision of General Education and the American Common School Ideal: Implications for Curriculum Policy, Practice, and Theory.

Around the middle years of this century, American progressive educators formulated a vision of general education for the secondary school that would afford all youth common opportunities to integrate and apply knowledge toward the resolution of personal-social problems. This progressive vision of general education was consistent with principles of the US common school ideal and predated the heyday of general education at the college level. This progressive vision of general education can serve today both as a conceptual tool to analyse and as a practical alternative to the national standards movement in the US. This vision of general education also provides common ground for deliberation among reconceptualist-social reconstructionist and progressive-experimentalist curriculum theorists.

Left Out: The Villainization of Progressive Education in the United States:

Upon publication, Diane Ravitch’s Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms garnered the kind of media attention that few books about education enjoy. Left Back, for example, received coveted exposure in the New York Times Book Review and Ravitch discussed the book on CSPAN and Booknotes. Given Ravitch’s prominence in education policy debates during the last two decades, not only as assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education in the administration of President George H. Bush but also as a frequent outspoken commentator, such attention hardly comes as a surprise. Moreover, the drive for academic standards in the name of enhancing U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace provides a policy context favorably disposed to Ravitch’s exaltation of the “academic curriculum.” Indeed, she has been a prominent advocate of national standards for education (Ravitch, 1995). Ravitch is well positioned, then, to “speak truth to power” about educational policy. It is both surprising and disappointing, then, that the value of her argument in Left Back, while clearly resonating with contemporary education reform efforts, is rather limited as an illumination of the history of twentieth-century educational reform in the United States and in the guidance it offers for the improvement of education in the future. “The aim of this book,” Ravitch claims in consistency with its subtitle, “is to trace the origins of America’s seemingly permanent debate about school standards, curricula, and methods.” In the next sentence that aim is narrowed considerably: “In particular, [this book] recounts the story of unrelenting attacks on the academic mission of the schools” (pp. 14–15). Further narrowed, the aim of the book becomes to argue “that anti-intellectualism was an inescapable consequence of important strains of educational progressivism, particularly the versions of progressivism that had the most influence on American public education” (p. 16). This last aim is the true agenda of the book: Ravitch examines most of the major progressive education initiatives of the twentieth century for their respective treatment of subject matter in the curriculum. Because Ravitch typically finds these efforts lacking in this regard, she dwells almost exclusively on the shortcomings of progressive education, devoting proportionally little attention to its successes. In contrast to her treatment of progressivism, Ravitch casts “academic curricula” and a select few of its champions in the most favorable of light, devoting virtually no substantive discussion to the shortcomings of this school of educational thought and practice. Ravitch pursues her agenda, however, more through persuasive techniques other than rigorous proof, with the result that her conclusions remain highly problematic. In particular, Ravitch’s argument is undermined by logical fallacies of oversimplification, slanting, and false dilemma, and by internal inconsistencies and errors of omission. The errors of omission in Left Back assume several forms. One form involves selective quoting: Ravitch omits material from documents that contradict the thesis of Left Back. For example, Ravitch accurately portrays the Report of the Committee of Ten (1893) as a touchstone for advocates of the academic curriculum. She highlights the Committee of Ten’s advocacy of academic curricula for all students, regardless of whether or not they plan to attend college. In language of the late twentiethcentury standards movement, Ravitch claims, “The high schools, said the committee, should be committed to academic excellence for all students in a democratic society” (p. 42). Ravitch asserts several times that the Committee recommended “that all children should receive an academic education” (p. 42, also p. 378). Although the Committee of Ten did recommend academic curricula for all high school students (the Committee, comprised largely of university faculty and officials, was formed to propose uniform nationwide college entrance requirements), it endorsed neither universal high school attendance nor high school completion for all adolescents. Ravitch ignores these latter points. The report (1893) stated that the “main function” of the secondary schools of the United States “is to prepare for the duties of life that small proportion of all the children in the country— a proportion small in number, but very important to the welfare of the nation— who show themselves able to profit by an education prolonged to the eighteenth year, and whose parents are able to support them while they remain so long at school” (p. 51). In 1893, that “small proportion” amounted to less than five percent of the high school age cohort (Angus & Mirel, 1999). Rather than envisioning secondary education for all youth, as progressives later would do, the Committee of Ten viewed the high school as an elite, albeit not an exclusively college-prep,

Recovering Curriculum Practice: Continuing the Conversation:

After clarifying several misperceptions of my analysis of the theory–practice dualism manifest in reconceptualist curriculum theorizing, I reply to James Henderson’s inquiries about my perspective on curriculum practice by discussing the ideas of Ralph Tyler and Joseph Schwab and curriculum enactment. Recognizing that continued conversation holds the most promise for a mitigation of ideological conflict endemic to the curriculum field, I propose two topics for further deliberation among curriculum scholars.

The school‐to‐work movement in the United States: policies, problems and possibilities

Abstract The school‐to‐work movement is best understood as part of a broader educational reform initiative aimed at providing workers with the necessary skills to place the US in a position of international economic competitiveness. The school‐to‐work movement grew out of the educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and is defined largely by the School‐to‐Work Opportunities Act of 1994. The reforms of this period also influenced a paradigm shift in vocational education in the US. Although key premises of the school‐to‐work movement are invalid and the reforms have failed to build upon past efforts, the rediscovery of progressive vocational education practices holds promise for the improvement of public schooling in the US. The comprehensive high school is considered the setting logistically conducive for school‐to‐work activities.

What's the Problem with a “Rigorous Academic Curriculum”?: Setting New Terms for Students’ School Experiences

Abstract An analysis of the ubiquitous but taken-for-granted term “rigorous academic curriculum” reveals that by definition it is not an academically rigorous term. The term contains multiple meanings, negative connotations, and a constricted conception of the school curriculum. It is associated with a discredited learning theory and in practice tends to function more as a status marker than as a substantive educational experience. We should shift our thinking and teaching away from the imprecise and potentially miseducative notion of a rigorous academic curriculum and toward the ideal of a vigorous educative curriculum.

Toward a curriculum theory for the new century: essay review of Patrick Slattery, Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era 1

11. The book reviewed here is Patrick Slattery (1995) Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era (New York: Garland), 328 pp.,

Curriculum Theory and Development and Public Policy Making

46.00 (HBK), ISBN 0‐8153‐1509‐0;

Performance Assessment: A Golden Opportunity to Improve the Future.

18.95 (PBK), ISBN 0‐8153‐1926‐6.

Latin literacy redux: the classical investigation in the United States, 1921–1924

Curriculum leaders who are public intellectuals must possess the capacity to identify, analyze, and resolve public curriculum problems. At least three actions are necessary on the part of the academic curriculum field to establish the possibility of creating a coherent democratic community that nurtures curriculum leaders as public intellectuals: the academic curriculum field must renew its commitment to public curriculum matters, afford curriculum leaders conceptual tools for identifying and analyzing public curriculum problems, and offer curriculum leaders constructive recommenda-tions for resolving practical curriculum problems. As these actions unfold, of course, curriculum policy making and practice will reciprocally inform the work of the academic curriculum field. In the brief discussion of these actions that follows, curriculum theory and development are viewed as aspects of public policy making.