The Imperfect Panacea

Professor Perkinson's fourth edition, proves to be a most provactive and disturbing chronicle of the events that lead to the development of the current public school system. He begins with the early colonists and compulsory education. He believes the development of the printing press, which influenced religous and political movements, also gave rise to the need the educate the masses. In distinguishing what education was to the upper classes and the lower classes, he shows how the concept of sociaization lies at the heart of an enduring faith of the notion that education was the panacea to cure the social ills throughout its inception. He carries the reader through the periods of Anti-Catholic sentiments and the post Civil War period which gave rise to private schools. He chronicles the varieties of other schools that existed: those run by women in their homes, called "dame" schools, to the academies and "monitorial" schools and the schools set up to teach teachers, called the "normal schools. He introduces the reader to Horace Mann, Booker T. Washington, Pestalozzi, the "Hebartians", Sizer, and John Dewey, to name a few, who influenced the modern theories of education. He chroncles the pligt of immigrants into urban life, their changing values and alienation as well as the plight of the newly freed Southern slaves and how the need for public schools developed to meets their growing numbers, while, he does state they necessarily met their needs. He details the influences of the rural migration into the cities, coupled with industrialization, making the cities unlivable for the middle and upper classes who took flight from the urban areas. He reveals the influences of the racist South in devloping separate schools to prevent an intermingling of the races in the schools, even after legislation was passed to enforce segregated schools. The books takes the reader through the development of the graded school system we know today. It is a compact book filled with a multitude of dates, facts and personalities which are sometimes hard to follow, but which cover the gamet of the social, politcal and psychological forces which helped to shape the public school system. He covers the time when the vast wealth of the Rockefellers, Vanderbuilts, and Carnegie, were made and their influences on the idea that "America was a land of opportunity." He takes you through the "success books" from Ben Franklin to P.T Barnum and the "McGuffy" Book series. There is so much more contained than can be written in this brief review. He concludes that "the only way Americans can shore up their lagging faith in education is to move beyond the public schools." It is a "must read" for educators and anyone interested the knowing the history of public education and the impossible tasks expected of educators and the system as it exists today.