The one best system : a history of American urban education

Summary: The One Best System a major new interpretation of what actually happened in the development of one of America's most influential institutions. At the same time it is a narrative in which the participants themselves speak out: farm children and factory workers, frontier teachers and city superintendents, black parents and elite reformers. And it encompasses both the achievements and the failures of the system: the successful assimilation of immigrants, racism and class bias; the opportunities offered to some, the injustices perpetuated for others.

Record details

ISBN: 0674637801
ISBN: 9780674637801
ISBN: 0674637828
ISBN: 9780674637825
ISBN: 0674637813
Physical Description: print
xii, 353 pages : 19 illustrations ; 24 cm
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1974.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-343) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

The one best system in microcosm : community and consolidation in rural education -- From village school to urban system : bureaucratization in the nineteenth century -- The politics of pluralism : nineteenth-century patterns -- Centralization and the corporate model : contests for control of urban schools, 1890-1940 -- Inside the system : the character of urban schools, 1890-1940 -- The one best system under fire, 1940-1973.