The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973
reviewed by Sol Cohen
 Title: The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 Author(s): Diane Ravitch Publisher: John Wiley, New York ISBN: 0465027024, Pages: 449, Year: 1974 Search for book at Amazon.com
In few areas is the general public so misinformed as in
the field of the governance of public schools. It is the
conventional wisdom that the public schools are not
involved in "politics," or that educational policy-making is
dictated by advances in the Science of pedagogy, or by the
inexorable finger of Progress, or by some process of
ratiocination uncontaminated by profane motives. This bit of
mythology has been widely accepted. It has not precluded school
"politics," but simply lessened its visibility. That is, public
schools have been largely removed from the realm of "public"
politics to behind-the-scene politics. The operations of
educational decision-makers, the stakes, the prizes, the
contestants, and their strategies are largely
invisible.
The fact is that public school systems are thoroughly political
phenomena from top to bottom. Education must compete with other
governmental functions for limited resources. More public money is
spent for education than any other single function of state and
local government. No public school in America exists without state
legislative sanction. All... (preview truncated at 150 words.) Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record Volume 76 Number 3, 1975, p. 505-515
http://www.tcrecord.org/library ID Number: 1392, Date Accessed: 5/22/2013 5:32:35 PM
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