Suchergebnisse

This paper explores the pre-conditions of the images of normal family relations which inform contemporary discourse on truancy. It locates these pre-conditions within state intervention into nineteenth century schooling. This structured the kind of school relations which were to become fundamental to state-authorised schooling. It illustrates the way in which this intervention fostered the generation of one particular model of family relations as `normal' and rendered alternatives deviant. It argues that a theory of correct family relations was embedded in the model of good schooling which was being structured by the state. Any given social division of labour involves a particular scheduling of social identities. A division of labour involving the family as a unit of production meant a scheduling of identities such that schooling and work would intersperse with each other. State intervention into schooling undermined social relations of families in occupations characterised by this form of organisation. It is argued that both the form and the content of schooling were implicated in fostering a particular scheduling of social identities and in marginalising alternative patterns of living.

A review essay on Ira Katznelson's & Margaret Weir's Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Stanley Aronowitz's & Henry A. Giroux's Education under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Debate over Schooling (South Hadley, Mass: Bergin & Garvey, 1985); & J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Alfred A. Knofp, 1985 [see listings in IRPS No. 41]). The collective strength of these works is the breadth of their insight into the causes of educational phenomena usually taken for granted or not addressed. Lukas's epic study of desegregation in Boston is decidedly nonscholarly, but it is serious & learned, & the product of much intellectual labor. An admirable work, it blocks every impulse to substitute a moral or political evaluation of events for an awareness of the inevitable ambiguities in actual educational politics. Katznelson's & Weir's work analyzes the place of history & conflicting SC interests in understanding the characteristics of public school systems. They argue for the need to go more deeply into the political processes that lie behind public school system development, & they provide detailed case studies of Chicago, Ill, & San Francisco, Calif. Aronowitz's & Giroux's encyclopedic work on schooling is seen as both too theoretical & too ambitious to succeed. F. Rasmussen

A fierce debate about civic education in American public schools
has erupted in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001. Many liberals and conservatives, though they disagree strongly
about which civic virtues to teach, share the assumption that such
education is an appropriate responsibility for public schools. They
are wrong. Civic education aimed at civic virtue is at best ineffective;
worse, it is often subversive of the moral purpose of schooling. Moreover,
the attempt to impose these partisan conceptions of civic virtue on
America's students violates the civic trust that underpins vibrant
public schools.