Reading Analysis- T&C Prologue/Chapter 1

Once again we are encountering in one of our classes the inequity of public education, as well as the issues that have plagued it for decades and the host of remedies that have been tried. For example, the prologue mentioned that instead of addressing huge social issues like the disparity between the haves and the have nots as far as wealth, education, and job opportunities, vocational education was instituted in public schools as a means to solve these problems. According to the authors, any new reform within education takes a generation or more to determine its effectiveness. They stress the history of educational reform should provide a guide for the future. So, what leads to educational reform? Their view is it it generally political, and they list a host of reasons on page 8 ("ethnic, religious, racial, gender, class differences"). No matter what the basis for educational reform, the real change needs to occur at just one level, the interaction within the classroom between a teacher and her students. Chapter 1 reflected on many of the educational reforms, particularly those from the past century. Statistics were given for many public views of education, and it was interesting to see how these varied over the decades with the overall feeling of the nation about patriotism, the family unit, role of education, importance of public institutions as a whole, racial and gender divisions, and the poor. The authors concluded the chapter with a discussion of the alleged decline in public education, which they felt the evidence for was "faulty". With a nation now facing issues never encountered in the past (page 37), the authors feel our public schools are doing a good job if they are even able to maintain a level of success under these outside influences. These two chapters made me consider in an entirely new light how our nation's public education system has evolved and what forces will continue to impact it in the future.