Joel Spring Chapter One: The History and Goals of Public Schooling
Chapter Overview
This chapter looks at issues pertaining to the conflicting interests, goals, and purposes of public schools; discusses the political, social, and economic purposes of education; and presents conflicts and debates that arise over whose values and morals should be represented in schools.
Chapter Outline:
1)The History and Goals of Public Schooling
2)Historical Goals of Schooling
3)The Political Goals of Schooling a)Education of future citizens and political leaders b)The role of meritocracy in the preparation of citizens and leaders c)Common schooling and problems with common education for all d)Contrasts between socialization and academic learning e)Education as a means of political control
4)The Social Goals of Schooling a)The role of schools in internal social control b)The expansion of the social role of school
5)The Economic Goals of Schooling a)Human capital theory b)Equality of opportunity c)Learning society and lifelong learning
6)Human Capital and the Role of Business in American Education
Key Terms:
Academic learning: Within the context of schooling, what students learn from classroom instruction, textbooks, and other forms of formal learning.
Americanization: Programs that teach new immigrants the laws, language, and customs of the
United States.
Common school: A form of schooling in which children from all religious and social classes were to attend the same type school and receive a common education.
Educational inflation: An increase in the number of high school and college graduates results in a decrease in the economic value of education, such that while the educational requirements of jobs increase, the actual skills required for the job do not change.
Human capital theory: An economic perspective contending that investment in education will improve the quality of workers and, consequently, increase the wealth of the community.

Internal social control: Control of one’s own behavior according to moral values, which are derived from family, church, community, and school.
Learning societies: Income and status are determined by one’s educational credentials.
Lifelong learning: In order to meet the changing technological requirements of the workplace, workers are engaged in continual training.
Meritocracy: A social system that gives an equal chance to all to develop their abilities and to advance in the social hierarchy.
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: Federal legislation that mandates closing the achievement gap among low income and high income students.
Secular humanism: A set of ethical standards that places primary emphasis on a person’s ability to interpret and guide his or her own moral values.
Social control: How society maintains order and controls crime and rebellion.
Socialization: Within the context of schooling, what students learn from interacting with other students, following school rules, and participating in school events.
Key Concepts:
“Education” does not always benefit the individual or society.
U.S. public schools were established (1) to reduce political and social unrest by teaching future citizens a common set of political values and patriotism; (2) to reduce social tensions by promising equality of educational opportunity; (3) to decrease crime by teaching morality; and
(4) to eradicate poverty by stimulating economic growth.
Public schools in the U.S. were originally charged to educate qualified leadership for a republican government.
Schools play a key role in a meritocracy as the institution that both trains and sorts citizens as well as provides them with an equal educational opportunity.
American social thought is ingrained with the idea that schooling provides the best means of identifying democratic leadership. Implicit within this idea is the belief that fairness will guide the selections that schools make. When fairness guides the decision-making process, determinations are made based upon talent rather than social factors.
When meritocracy fails, the power of privileged economic and racial groups is perpetuated.

Thomas Jefferson proposed a very limited education for the general citizenry.
Horace Mann wanted schools to instill a common political creed in all students. Mann felt that without commonly held political beliefs, society was doomed to political strife and chaos.
Horace Mann believed that schools were essential to reforming society.
Commonly held political values would curtail political violence and revolution as well as maintain political order. For Mann, the important idea was that all children in society attend the same type of school, where children of all religions and social classes could obtain a common education.
Horace Mann believed that common schools could teach generally accepted basic principles of a republican form of government.
Mann assumed that there was agreement as to the general nature of these common political values and that teaching these common values would maintain the political order necessary to the survival of the United States government.
Mann’s political and social objectives focused on the concept of socialization.
Learning to obey rules and loyalty and service to the school are two ways in which educational leaders can use socialization as a powerful means of political control.
In the 1890s, school emphasized patriotic exercises and school spirit in order to “Americanize” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.
Teaching patriotism and community service creates problems in a society with a variety of religious, ethnic, and political groups.
In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that expulsion from school of Jehovah’s Witnesses for not saluting the flag was a violation of their constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Schools are sometimes viewed as inexpensive police due to the role they play in the exercise of social control and in solving social problems.
Increasingly, American society has touted the decline of the family and church as reasons to rely upon the school to instill moral values.
The problem for educational leaders is determining which moral values to teach.
Home economics courses were designed to train women to be scientific housekeepers who

would be freed from kitchen drudgery through a reliance on packaged and processed foods.
The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, issued by the National Education Association in 1918, set the stage for high school to become the major public institution for the socialization of youth through school dances, athletics, student government, clubs, and other extracurricular activities.
High school activities aimed to control adolescent sexuality and prepare youth for future family roles.
Proms became widespread in the 1930s as the high school became a mass institution.
Proms were considered a poor or middle-class version of the debutante ball, which instructed youth in proper dating and mating rituals.
The term “teenager” was popularized during the 1940s to mean a group defined by high school attendance.
Much of the controversy over the social goals of education center around differing beliefs with regard to moral values, AIDS, sex education, sexuality, and sexual orientation.
Another goal of schooling with which most people agree is that of character and citizenship education.
Secular humanism is the set of ethical standards that places emphasis on a person’s ability to interpret and guide his or her own moral actions.
The federally funded Sex Respect program and the goals of Title V of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 raise important questions about the meaning of respect and the goals of public schools.
Despite the fact that the historical record indicates that moral instruction has not reduced crime, controlled teenage sexuality, or ended substance abuse, society still turns to public schools as the cure for many social problems.
Today, schools are dominated by economic goals and students are educated to be workers in a global economy.
Originally, Horace Mann had two economic objectives: human capital and equality of opportunity.
Human capital theory states that investment in education will improve the quality of workers and, accordingly, increase the wealth of the community.
Human capital arguments played a major role in the legislative outcomes of the War on Poverty programs of the 1960s.

Antipoverty programs were intended to eliminate poverty by impacting the relationship between schooling and poverty. It was thought that they would break the cycle of poverty.
Head Start programs are premised on the idea that some children from low-income families begin school at a disadvantage in comparison to children from middle- and high-income families.
Besides the issue of poverty, human capital arguments have directly influenced the organization of schools.
During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the sorting machine is the dominant model for linking schools to the labor market.
The school as sorting machine separates students based upon ability and interest, so that upon graduation the jobs students receive will match their educational interests.
Under this model, students are sorted based upon standardized test results.
The goal of the sorting machine in the global labor market is to prepare U.S. workers for higherpaying jobs in the global marketplace by expanding educational opportunities.
Human capital and global competitiveness are the basis for the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act and the goals for secondary education that were reached at the 2005 National Education Summit on High Schools.
Mann’s other economic goal was the idea of equality of opportunity, or the resolution of the conflict between promises of equality and the existence of a society strongly divided by economic inequalities.
The War on Poverty and the No Child Left Behind legislation are premised on the idea that improving schooling will provide an equal opportunity for poor children in the labor market.
When educational inflation occurs, educational requirements for jobs increase and the skills required to do a job remain the same.
Educational inflation first occurred in the 1970s and highlighted the importance of job opportunities over the availability of educational opportunities in determining employment.
As the first formal public organization encountered by students, schools prepare and train students for participation in other complex social organizations, such as the workplace.
Essential parts of the global educational system are learning societies and lifelong learning. In a learning society, educational credentials determine income and status. Lifelong learning is the continual training of workers that is necessary to meet the changing requirements of the workplace.

Education for the global economy links schooling to the interests of the business community and international organizations.