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Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
PDF Ebook Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
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Review
No society has ever, at any time, tried to bring such a variety of people to so high a level of proficiency as this country has, or come as close to success as we have. American educational criticism suffers from a shocking lack of perspective, historical and cross-cultural...David Tyack and Larry Cuban...do recognize [this fact], and it's that understanding that makes their aptly titled book so important...Surely the message Tyack and Cuban are trying to deliver is crucial: understand the political nature of school reform; involve teachers; understand how complex the process is and how much thought and patience it takes; learn from the past. When we try to use radical school reform to solve whatever public problem seems most urgent--that endless cycle of educational crisis, utopian demand and disillusionment--we fail both our schools and our society. (Peter Schrag Nation)Superb...[Tyack and Cuban] calmly put the dense tomes of the education experts in clear perspective. [They] note how Americans have always looked to the nation's schools, with mixed results, to solve certain social, political and economic problems. (Sara Mosle New Republic)[This] is a book that should appeal to, and be read by, a wide audience: connoisseurs of millennial zeal; policy advisers; even chief inspectors of schools. Anyone, in fact, who is interested in the realities of reforming state education (known, of course, as public school education in the US) and the lessons that can be drawn from the past 100 years in America. Two insights have particular relevance. The first is that: "Good schools can play an important role in creating a just, prosperous and democratic society, but they should not be scapegoats and are not panaceas"...The second insight is equally important. The political will might be strong; the social conviction passionate. "The journey from policy talk to what occurs in schools and classrooms", however, is "long, often unpredictable and complicated." (Chris Woodhead (Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools) New Statesman)In their splendid little book Stanford University Professors David Tyack and Larry Cuban adopt a radical approach to the ongoing crisis in the American public school system: listen to the teacher, let the teacher decide. Thus is the conclusion of this succinct, but hard-hitting history of reform of public schools in the United States over the last hundred years...This book is...a revelation. (Kevin White American Studies)If I could place one book before the many people--from legislators to business and civic groups--calling for school reform, it would be Tinkering toward Utopia. It is a wise and sobering book. Tyack and Cuban raise caution about the quick fix or the "visionary" solution and remind us of the power of the hard, day-to-day human work of social change. (Mike Rose, author of Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America)The authors...are two of the brightest minds in American education. Mr. Tyack is the best education historian...Mr. Cuban...is one of the United States" leading experts in the problems of school organization and structure...This is a bold, cobweb-clearing book that challenges many of the assumptions that Americans have about their schools. Anyone seriously interested in education reform ought to read it. (Washington Times)This accessible examination of the reasons for and effects of such wide-ranging historic reforms as graded schools, IQ testing, school site management, and ability grouping helps to put many of today's proposals for improving schools in sharper focus. (Diane Manuel San Jose Mercury News)Tinkering toward Utopia belongs in a special genre of books about education by historians. The genre does not represent history as such but draws on a deep base of historical knowldge to address wider issues of educational policy. David Tyack and Larry Cuban have successfully written a difficult book, one that demonstrates how historical perspectives can reconstruct a policy discourse...The arguments advanced here have two powerful assumptions, generally ignored in the historiography of education. First, policy making can only be understood as an ongoing "interaction"; a significant event changes all participants and must be examined over a sufficiently extensive period of time to know it thoroughly...Second, the authors assume that policy makers have largely been "elitist," ignorant of teachers and their locally distinctive workplaces...This fine little book demonstrates once more the gadfly power of Dewey's "tinkering" paradigm in the face of the extremist educational policies of the 1980s and 1990s. (Paul Mattingly Journal of American History)Although aimed primarily at educators, this book also has enormous value for social service professionals and scholars. With the current emphasis on building communities and linking social agencies with schools, understanding school reform is vital...The spate of recent books and articles on school reform has contributed a confusing array of approaches and arguments. Through its historical analysis, this book helps to disentangle some of this confusion and offers critical lessons of history...[This] is a small book with large thoughts. For social service professionals and scholars, it is a quick but profound study in public school reform. It suggests they will be most successful if their projects help teachers solve concrete problems in teaching students...For educators, citizens, and policy makers who toil every day to push the rock of Sisyphus up the hill of change, this little tome offers some real treasures in historical perspective, argument, and realistic expectations. (Penny Bender Sebring Social Service Review)Tinkering Toward Utopia [is a] brief and masterful overview of one hundred years of school reform in the United States. No one has done it better! Tyack and Cuban fully deserve their 1995 Harvard University Press annual award for an outstanding publication about education and society, and their thoughtful perspectives on a century of reform efforts to improve U.S. schools would almost certainly have delighted the late Lawrence Cremin, the "dean" of educational historians in the United States...Because this book combines the wisdom of its authors with a thoughtful review of the prior research of many others, its thirty pages of endnotes are particularly valuable: they constitute a gold mine for future doctoral students in education. The authors make these endnotes easy to use by printing the page numbers of the corresponding text at the top of each endnote page. Another notable strength of the book is its conciseness. Readers of Tinkering Toward Utopia regularly benefit from succinct statements that summarize the authors' views on complex issues. Any good book does this, but my reading of the prose in this brief volume makes me see the expressive powers of its writers as unusually vivid and precise. In the realm of writing about education, this aspect of the book is a rare occurrence, as education, in my experience, runs close to sociology in its capacity to generate turgid prose. (Harold Howe II Harvard Educational Review)
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From the Back Cover
Tinkering Toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices. David Tyack and Larry Cuban suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and also to keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.
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Product details
Paperback: 184 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press; Revised edition (March 25, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674892836
ISBN-13: 978-0674892835
Product Dimensions:
6.2 x 0.5 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
30 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#572,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
In Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform, David Tyack and Larry Cuban present education reform through a detailed analysis of the past century, highlighting reforms that were imposed upon educators along with those that developed from within the education community. Tyack and Cuban do a thorough job describing how the implementation of reform initiatives redefined teaching and learning throughout the past century. By viewing the history of education reform, we are able to see how education has arrived to where it currently is and possibly predict or influence its future direction. Lastly, Tyack and Cuban do a wonderful job explaining schools as institutions with their own valued culture, where teachers can improve education for their students with the right support. Tinkering Toward Utopia is a timeline of education reform meant for educators, social professionals, policymakers, and scholars. The main arguments are that educational reform takes place in incremental progress, the grammar of schooling persists, and reform initiatives should not be imposed in a top down approach but rather from within the classroom.The first chapter, "Progress or Regress," gives a historical account of educational reform from Horace Mann to the administrative progressives to the 1990's. Education was held in high regard as being responsible for the future of the society. However, the administrative progressives' belief that education could be standardized and would improve education for all had failed. There were large disparities in educational opportunities with the poor, blacks, working-class immigrants, disabled, and females suffering most from the inequities. Interestingly, even with the social ills of poverty and segregation, during the 1940's and 50's schools were fairing well; the community and parents were satisfied with their school and teachers. In the mid 1950's a new form of progress was breaking through the educational arena in a campaign for "simple justice." From the 1970's onward, people began to show disappointment in schools and in the 1980's with the publication of A Nation at Risk, people began to believe that schools and test scores needed to improve if we were to improve our society. Tyack and Cuban do not take a side of either progress or regress. However, they do state that, "The public schools, for all their faults, remain one of our most stable and effective public institutions" (pg. 38).The fourth chapter, "Why the Grammar of Schooling Persists," discusses the stability within the school system. The basic grammar of schooling has not changed. School hours, the physical space within the classroom, grades, credits, and subjects have remained the same. Although some have challenged the grammar of schooling, the initiatives have disappeared leaving a few changes but nothing insofar as to drastic change the grammar of schooling. A few innovative initiatives include the ungraded schools, departmental specialization in elementary, and teachers working in teams. All of which attempted to make positive changes to teaching and learning.The fifth chapter, "Reinventing Schooling," describes the impact of drastic initiatives in reforming education. Initiatives such as electronic pedagogy, contracting instruction, managing education, merit pay, and teaching by machine have been implemented and resisted by educators nor have they proven to work better than the public schools.Presently, with the paradigm of standardization leading assessments, curriculum, instruction, Tyack and Cuban's Tinkering Toward Utopia can help educators understand the progress that has been made within the education system. Education reform is an incremental progress, tinkering, from within the framework of the schools, not a mandated top down approach. Tyack and Cuban advocate for reforms that help teachers improve instruction from inside the classroom as opposed to a top down approach.
I used this book for a class on the social foundations of the U.S. educational system. I found it to be well-researched and informative, and it was pretty easy to read. I enjoyed reading it and learning about the different cultural factors that influenced the development of education in the U.S. On the seller's side, the book arrived on time and as advertised, so I was quite happy with it. I will be keeping the book for future reference.
Great text book! Tyack and Cuban recount the history of how the public schools were formed and the reforms that followed up until 1995 when the book was written. This book shows how public schools directly impact society as a whole, to include the politics involved with school reforms.As a bonus, the Kindle version helps education students locate and cite passages quickly and efficiently, just by looking at the notes section in your Kindle app or device, or by typing in a keyword in the search. The notes section will contain all of your highlighted passages. The only issue is that there are no pages indicated, but rather 'locations' within the book, so you will have to use APA style for referencing electronic books. It would be nice though, if all electronic books display the page numbers and even the chapter that should appear at the top of the app or Kindle device.
Having read Tinkering Toward Utopia for one of my graduate classes in administration at the GSE at Rutgers, I would summarize that the book is excellent, but a little bit dated.Tyack & Cuban present a well-done overview of the American educational system, from its beginnings in the early 20th century through the mid-1980's. Their theme, "tinkering toward utopia," is an interesting take on addressing school reform throughout the century and sheds light on the problems and pitfalls of "overpromising" and "hyperbole" that have existed--and continue to exist--in American education. Overall, the text is easy to read and is replete with well-developed examples.My only caution is that although the ideas presented continue through and are valied in modern times, the examples and data contained in the work are, for lack of a better word, dated--11 years in public education, especially with 5+ of those years overshadowed by NCLB, is a long time of increased levels of accountability that are missing in what could be "a century (and a little more) of public school reform." One would hope that a revised edition be published in the near future with a chapter or two specifically devoted to those last 5 years of the 20th century and the transition into the 21st.However, overall, the text is excellent and highly informative.
This text was for class and therefore proprietary to higher education. A great read with easy to read text that allowed excellent comprehension of the subject matter. Pedagogy and its history at its best.
David Tyack demonstrates how we as Americans believe that our schools can be a panacea of society's ills, but that this is a fallacy. What actually occurs is that change in our schools is very slow and often takes decades. In many ways, they have not changed. If you want to read a thought provoking book about American school reform, this is it!
I found the book extremely valuable in presenting the forces acting on the public education system in the US. Helped me recognize the interplay between educational, learning, and various sociopolitical systems, highlighting various level of potential innovations with the realities of leading students to real understanding.mAnd it is very well written.
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