a third Cremins selection

[kber <kber@EARTHLINK.NET>]

w/o comment

Ken



  What would be the marks of a new interpretation? I find myself more
interested at this point in the
  questions that would provide it than in the answers it might embrace.
Bailyn, of course, has given us an
  initial lead: the questions must derive from a comprehensive view of
education. Recall that Cubberley
  shared the progressive vision of the public school as society's chief
lever of social improvement. It is not
  surprising, therefore, that he saw the evolution of the public school
as the leitmotif of American
  educational history. Yet at the very time he wrote, a revolution was
in the making, in the rise of the
  mass media of communication and in the organization of a growing
number of private, quasi-public, and
  public agencies committed to education but not organized as schools.
This revolution has since
  occasioned a complete transformation in the architecture of
contemporary education, one that clearly
  suggests the need for a more inclusive account of our educational
history.

  Certainly, the question of how the public school came to be would
remain central in any such account;
  but to avoid distortion it must be raised as part of a much broader
inquiry into the nature and uses of
  education at different times in our past. What agencies, formal and
informal, have shaped American
  thought, character, and sensibility over the years, and what have been
the significant relationships
  between these agencies and the society that has sustained them? To ask
the question this is to project
  our concerns beyond the schools to a host of other institutions that
educate: families, churches,
  libraries, museums, publishers, benevolent societies, youth groups,
agricultural fairs, radio networks,
  military organizations, and research institutes. It permits us to
describe such historical phenomena as
  the rise of newspapers in the eighteenth century, of social
settlements in the nineteenth, and of mass
  television in the twentieth; and it provides us with a context within
which to assess the changing role and
  influence of schools and colleges, private as well as public. Most
important, perhaps, it enables us to
  guard against what Herbert Butterfield has called "the abridgement of
history," the tendency to
  oversimplify the past by viewing it strictly in terms of the present.

  From The wonderful world of Ellwood Patterson Cubberley: an essay on
the historiography of American education, pp.
  47-48.

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