The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Foundations

By Alan S. Canestrari and Bruce A. Marlowe

Promotes a model of critique for teachers, scholars, and policy makers to challenge established educational practice in a global context.

The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Foundations features international scholars uniquely qualified to examine issues specific to their regions of the world. The Handbook provides readers with an alternative to the traditional texts in the foundations of education by taking aim at the status quo, and by offering frameworks from which teachers and scholars of education can critically evaluate schools and schooling. Throughout, the essays are grounded in a broad historical context and the authors use an international lens to examine current controversies in order to provoke the kinds of discussion crucial for developing a critical stance.

The Handbook is presented in six parts, each beginning with an Introduction to the subject. The sections featured are: Part I. Challenging Foundational Histories and Narratives of Achievement; Part II. Challenging Notions of Normalcy and Dominion; Part III. Challenging the Profession; Part IV. Challenging the Curriculum; Part V. Challenging the Idea of Schooling; and Part VI. Challenging Injustice, Inequity, and Enmity.

The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Foundations offers unique insight into subjects such as:

• Educational reform in India, Pakistan, and China
• The global implications of equity-driven education
• Teacher education and inclusionary practices
• The Global Educational Reform Movement (G.E.R.M.)
• Education and the arts
• Maria Montessori and Loris Malaguzzi
• Legal education in authoritarian Syria

The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Foundations is an important book for current and aspiring educators, scholars, and policy makers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781118931820

Book preview

Preface

The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Foundations

Samantha Painter and Maia Lloyd

During our daily googling we stumbled upon an internet article posted by a foundation interested in the promotion of education in Pakistan. Here is a brief excerpt:

Pakistan’s youth, making up the majority of the population, must be educated and provided with the necessary skills to become a viable workforce and produce the next generation of innovators. In its current state, the education system fails to provide real‐life skills and opportunities to talented students who have the potential to become the next Bill Gates (p. 1).

Bill Gates? To us, this sounded very much like an American approach to educational reform. Is education simply about providing children with the requisite skills to enter the workforce? While most would agree that education is a fundamental human right, there is much less agreement about what it should look like and in whose interests it should be designed. And, there is considerable disagreement as well, about whether the ultimate measure of a nation’s educational system should be the number of corporate titans it produces.

Yet, nations increasingly dance to the tune of worldwide competition, eager to celebrate (or, conversely, commiserate) over their standings in international testing regimens, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

For children, the performance rankings are irrelevant. As nations call for reform to improve their position in the world educational order, millions remain unable to access even a basic education. For the poor, their lack of educational access is centuries old. As suggested above, while compulsory education, in all its cultural variations, has become the global standard, quite a large number of children on the planet – a disproportionate number of whom are poor, female or both – still have little or no access to schooling. Few, if any, educational opportunities exist in places torn by civil wars, sectarian violence, and abject poverty. Worse, in many places, precisely because of their gender, religious beliefs, and/or longstanding ethnic prejudices, children are deliberately denied access to an education. In many places, these circumstances are centuries old and appear intractable. In contrast, citizens of advanced, highly technical nations, enjoy the abundant prospects of a twenty‐first‐century future, where geographic barriers seem to collapse, where the flow of information encircles the Earth as if in orbit, where communication is instantaneous. And yet, large numbers of the Earth’s children remain confined by an imposed otherness, even in the world’s most prosperous nations.

But there are changes afoot, many of them quite promising. What does the global educational landscape look like if we gazed down from our satellite as it circled Earth?

Enter Southeast Asia. Along outstretched plains and colossal mountains, immerse yourself into Chinese culture, where students devote more time to schoolwork than in any other country. At 8:00 a.m., a sixth‐grader sits down at his desk with 45 of his peers, ready for a day of math, technology, Chinese, English, music, physical education, crafts, and ethics. Classes end at around 4:00 p.m., but most students stay at school to participate in activities like the Chinese Folk Music Orchestra, Calligraphy and Painting Club, or Ping Pong Club. And, schoolwork is not over when students get home. At an average of 14 hours a week, teenage students in China receive the most homework worldwide (Darell, 2016). A lot of schools also offer weekend classes such as Olympic Math, Chinese Chess, and Badminton. Once students reach high school level, evening classes – which often last until 11:00 p.m. – are tacked onto their day (Butrymowicz, 2011). It is constant competition, with the best universities as the almighty prize.

Two thousand eight hundred sixty‐four miles west, an Iranian girl arrives at school around 7:30 a.m. and plays with other girls in the schoolyard. Her female teacher will call the girls into the classroom for their day to begin. She will spend her entire education with girls, as boys and girls are educated separately until they reach university level (Darell, 2016). Many Iranian policy‐makers, determined to keep Iran as a traditional Islamic state, have banned co‐education, assigned male and female teachers to classes of their corresponding gender, changed textbooks to show people participating in roles that fit their gender binary, and shifted women away from stereotypically masculine disciplines at universities (Mehran, 2003, p. 19). In more recent years, the Ministry of Education has pushed for policies that give women equal opportunities in education, such as revising textbook images to portray more female participation in traditionally masculine tasks (Mehran, 2003, p. 15). The efforts to close the Iranian gender gap have made a significant difference in the number of women attending universities; but, even with proportional enrollment numbers, unemployment for women after graduation was as high as 52.3% in 2008. Unemployment for men with tertiary education leveled at around 14.9% (International Labour Organization, 2008). In this example, the push for equality in education has not yet extended into the workforce.

Just southeast of the Iranian border, Pakistani children have a very different relationship with education. These children have no legal right to a free education. Compulsory education only occurs between ages five and nine (Darell, 2016); Pakistan’s school life expectancy is eight years, but many children do not attend school at all (Central Intelligence Agency, 2017). In fact, one quarter of 7–16 year olds have never been to school (UNESCO, 2012). This is largely attributed to the lack of government spending on education. More recently with the War on Terror, children who do attend school face danger from terror attacks. With bag checks, constant safety drills, and sometimes school closure, education is frequently put on the back burner for Pakistani youth (Ansari, 2014).

Northwest 3,683 miles, a student in France sits feet shaking, palms sweating, as he takes a test that determines not only what he knows, but where he will go to next. In France, secondary school is divided into two sections, lower schools (collèges) and upper schools (lycées). At the end of lower secondary school, students take a national test in one of three tracks: Academic, technological, or vocational. If students pass, they receive a Diplôme National du Brevet (DNB), and if they fail, they receive a Certificat de Formation Générale (CFG). All students with a DNB are permitted to enroll in upper secondary school, but only a select few with a CFG are able to continue. A student decides the track (academic, technological, or vocational) they will take at the end of their first year, and spends the rest of his time at upper school preparing for his particular baccalauréat exam. The scores received on the academic bac exam determine students’ entry into higher education (Magaziner, 2015). Central European countries follow a similar education system as France. Germany and Belgium also allow parents and students to decide the specific educational track they would like to follow at a young age; students are assessed rigorously throughout their time in school (Angloinfo, 2017).

Across the Atlantic Ocean, 4,248 miles west, children are learning history, English, and French simultaneously. In Canada, there are two official languages: French and English. Because of this, students in Canada take some of their lessons in both French and English. Bilingual education does not exist in areas of Canada where English is more prominent than French, but most Canadian students take steps to become bilingual in their national languages (Darell, 2016). Many countries require students to learn a second language at a young age, but others, like the United States, typically exclude bilingual education from school curricula. In American cities like Los Angeles, many students are considered English Language Learners (ELL), but bilingual education has been defunded and foreign language studies are not a priority. In contrast, for Canadian students, bilingualism remains a highly valued skill.

Another 3,878 miles back across the Atlantic Ocean, a seven‐year old Finnish child walks into her very first day of school. Starting school at an older age is just one element that makes Finland’s education system quite unconventional. Children are not just sitting at home during their first seven years, however; every Finnish child has the legal right to free childcare and preschool. Preschool educators all hold bachelor’s degrees and prepare children with the skills they need when entering primary school (Sanchez, 2014). There is a strong emphasis on exploration and play in Finland, and delaying a child’s scholastic start time allows for both more time for play and more time outdoors. By the time they are adolescents, students in Finland choose a specific secondary school that will prepare them for their future, whether it be higher education or the workforce. Unlike France, and every other Western nation, Finnish students are rarely tested during their time in primary and secondary school. Finnish education also values in‐depth learning. Students spend a longer time learning fewer subjects, and they do so typically in inquiry‐based environments that stress critical thinking, and result in considerably less stress than is seen in adolescents in other parts of the world (Day, 2015). Students in Finland also benefit from small class sizes and they have substantially shorter school days and virtually no homework in the elementary grades. Even at the secondary level, Finnish students have the lightest homework loads in the world.

Three thousand miles south, the literacy rate for children under the age of 18 is under 50% for parts of the African continent, in stark contrast to rates in Europe and South America, where youth literacy rates are among the highest at 90–100 (Do Something, 2017). Nevertheless, despite the visual that relief organizations typically paint in somberly serenaded commercials, Africa is not an entirely barren continent where tribes live peacefully among giraffes and chimpanzees; educational issues in African countries are multifaceted and remarkably dissimilar depending where one finds oneself on the continent. One particular issue that Sub‐Saharan Africa faces which echoes across the globe is religion. While many countries must grapple with the challenges of meeting the needs of a diverse student body that might embrace different religious beliefs and traditions – particularly in history, science, and health classes – Sub‐Saharan African education is notable for some dramatic differences in the experiences of children, depending on whether they attend Christian or Muslim schools. The distribution of Christian missionary schools in predominantly Muslim areas explains some of these differences and Muslim education tends to be more attainable in areas where Muslims are a local minority, compared to areas where they are the majority. But, Africa is a vast continent with many varieties of educational experiences in this context. For example, Muslims in Rwanda receive more education, on average, than do Christians, although the reverse is true in Nigeria (Murphy, 2016).

How do we make sense of it all? What questions can inform discussion, debate, and good policy? Despite the remarkable diversity of educational experience across the globe, most discussions about schooling and schoolchildren – both within and between nations – lack depth and validity. A heavy weight lies on the shoulder of the educator; yet in virtually every country, those most intimately involved in the education of young people have little input into the educational laws, policies, and standards that will be instrumental in shaping the outcomes of the next generation. Education is perhaps more political than ever before, and we believe it is for this reason that educators must be more politicized than ever before.

As suggested above, we live in a rapidly changing, increasingly connected world; a place where disagreements abound, especially with respect to how children and young people should be prepared for adulthood, by whom and for what purpose. Particularly in comparison to previous generations of educators, new teachers – and scholars of education both – need frameworks from which they can critically evaluate schools and schooling in this larger, global context. Wherever they find themselves on the planet, few of today’s teachers are capable of standing up to state‐mandated, top‐down, rigid curricular and instructional mandates. They are often out of play, constrained by state or school bureaucracies demanding compliance and uniformity. We need critically literate teachers capable of mediating the technocratic demands of mandated curricula. Preparing such teachers must begin at the pre‐service level or new teachers will find themselves looking very much like the old ones, mindlessly going through the motions without question and reflection. And, equally important, a new generation of scholars in the field of education will require a foundation from which they may help beginning educators frame the difficult decisions they must navigate.

There are precious few handbooks on the foundations of education that speak to the needs of today’s scholars because of the parochialism of the textbook market. Indeed, the educational foundations bazaar is awash with books that either focus narrowly on the American experience or seek to explain the varieties of international educational arrangements from a decidedly ethnocentric, American, or Western point of view. Virtually all of the best‐selling foundation texts that either include an international section, or take international education as their primary focus, are written by Americans. In contrast, the book you hold in your hands features chapters from international scholars uniquely qualified to examine issues specific to their regions of the world, but which are grounded in a broad historical and global context.

The intention of this text is to provide readers with an alternative to the traditional texts on the foundations of education. The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Foundations takes an innovative approach to the fundamentals of education – one that uses an international lens to examine current controversies, with the aim of provoking the kind of discussion that is crucial for developing and maintaining a critical stance. The contributors ask, how and why has education come to function the way it does in different regions of the world? And, more critically: How should education work?

Most textbooks explore these questions in more neutral ways, spreading a singular polemic, which depoliticizes education for future educators. In contrast, this textbook aims at skepticism in order to promote a model of critique; only then can aspiring teachers reflect upon their own critical viewpoints and encourage the children and young people in their future classrooms to do the same.

References

Angloinfo, The School System, in Belgium (Angloinfo, 2017). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from www.angloinfo.com/how‐to/belgium/family/schooling‐education/school‐system.

Ansari, Massoud, Life in a Pakistani School – where ‘stranger danger’ can mean bombers and gunmen (The Telegraph, 2014). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/11300297/Life‐in‐a‐Pakistani‐school‐where‐stranger‐danger‐can‐mean‐bombers‐and‐gunmen.html.

Butrymowicz, Sarah, A Day in the life of Chinese Students, in The Hechinger Report (The Hechinger Report, 2011). Retrieved February 24 2018 from http://hechingered.org/content/a‐day‐in‐the‐life‐of‐chinese‐students_3826/.

Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan: People and Society in The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency, 2017). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from www.cia.gov/library/publications/the‐world‐factbook/geos/ir.html.

Darell, Richard, 20 Fascinating Fact about Education Around the World (Bit Rebels, 2016). Retrieved 24 February 2014 from http://www.bitrebels.com/lifestyle/20‐facts‐education‐around‐world/.

Day, Kelly, "11 Ways Finland’s Education System Shows Us that ‘Less is More’, in Filling My Map. (Day, 2015). Retrieved 24 February 2014 from https://fillingmymap.com/2015/04/15/11‐ways‐finlands‐education‐system‐shows‐us‐that‐less‐is‐more/.

Do Something, 11 Facts About Education Around the World (Do Something, 2017). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11‐facts‐about‐education‐around‐world.

International Labour Organization, Unemployment with Tertiary Education, Female (% of Female Unemployment) (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2008a). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TERT.FE.ZS?locations=IR.

International Labour Organization, Unemployment with Tertiary Education, Male (% of male Unemployment) (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2008b). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TERT.MA.ZS?locations=IR.

Magaziner, Jessica, Education in France in Education Profiles (New York City, NY: World Education News & Review, 2015). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from http://wenr.wes.org/2015/09/education‐france.

Mehran, Golnar, Gender and Education in Iran, Commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/4, The Leap to Equality (UNESCO, 2003).

Murphy, Caryle, Q&A: The Muslim‐ Christian Education Gap in Sub‐Saharan Africa. (Pew Research Center, 2016). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from www.pewresearch.org/fact‐tank/2016/12/14/qa‐the‐muslim‐christian‐education‐gap‐in‐sub‐saharan‐africa/.

Reeg, Caitlan, The German School System Explained (Young Germany, 2015). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from www.young‐germany.de/topic/study/the‐german‐school‐system‐explained.

Sanchez, Claudio, What The U.S. Can Learn From Finland, Where School Starts At Age 7, in Education (NPR, 2014). Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287255411/what‐the‐u‐s‐can‐learn‐from‐finland‐where‐school‐starts‐at‐age‐7.

UNESCO, Fact Sheet – Education in Pakistan in Education for All Global Monitoring Report (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2012).

UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Adult Literacy Rate, Population 15+ Years, Both Sexes. (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2015). Retrieved 24 February 2018 from http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?Code=SE.ADT.LITR.ZS&id=af3ce82b&report_name=Popular_indicators&populartype=series&ispopular=y

Acknowledgments

This book began with a request from Wiley‐Blackwell Publications to edit a foundations of education handbook. As we spoke about the project with Jayne Fargnoli – who eventually became our acquisitions editor, guide and most enthusiastic supporter – we settled upon an alternative to the typical, overly tedious, ethnocentric, and uncritical texts to which we have become accustomed. Instead, we offer here an unconventional foundations of education book, based upon the notion that we must challenge what for so long has been considered foundational and we must do so in the voices from scholars from around the globe. So, to begin, we offer a well‐deserved thank you to each of our contributors for their scholarly manuscripts and patience over the past several years as the work unfolded.

We would also like to acknowledge and thank all of the Wiley professionals who have shepherded us through the process and publication of this text including Janani Govindankutty and Denisha Sahadevan, project editors and Commissioning Editor, Haze Humbert, Roshna Mohan and Nivetha Udayakumar.

Thank you to our reviewers for their scholarly review, constructive criticism, and suggestions to our proposal and final manuscript.

We would also be remiss if we did not express our sincere appreciation to three students from Roger Williams University, who were instrumental in the publication of this volume. Margaret Foster, Maia Lloyd, and Samantha Painter provided essential, research assistance, editing, and writing from the project’s inception.

Finally, we are extremely fortunate to have spectacular administrative support at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Myke McCutcheon is an absolute gem. It was because of her efforts that we were able to so smoothly assemble, sequence, and format the chapters, keep track of author permissions, and get the final manuscript into presentable shape (concurrent with her other responsibilities as the Administrative Assistant for the Departments of Education and Business).

Part I

Challenging the Foundations Narrative

Has education taken an evolutionary wrong turn? Will the historical, philosophical, and sociological foundations of education that have developed over the centuries continue to provide educators with a sustainable developmental path towards praxis now and in the future? Might there be alternative pathways upon which praxis and reform be built? Should educators challenge the status quo and move purposefully, critically in another direction?

We offer the following readings as a catalyst for discourse about the provocative questions above and others that may be framed, limited only by one’s willingness to discuss, debate and defy conventional dogma.

In A Story of Hegemony: The Globalization of Western Education, Canestrari and Foster trace the foundations of education in the West from its ancient Greek and Roman roots to the current wave of global educational reform. Along the way, the authors illuminate the threads of the past that still can be found in the fabric of education today. The editorial essay springs from the perspectives of critical pedagogy that the authors have embraced.

In the second chapter, Kane asks the reader to consider the experience of so‐called popular education in Latin America, an approach to teaching and learning based on participatory community development, rather than top‐down directives from state bureaucracies. In the context of his examination of the 40‐year history of this Latin American movement, Kane examines how popular education movements are related to larger social movements and reflects on the potential of these approaches outside this region of the world.

In their discussion of educational reform in Southeast Asia, Hamza and Wadhwa begin with the history of British occupation and the ways in which the residue of English notions of colonial schooling permeate regional conceptions of teaching and learning. And, they use this history as a point of departure to examine how the meaning of access to education has evolved to include the inclusion of girls, ethnic minorities, and children on reservations. Throughout, their concern is with the fundamental issues that are driving the most recent wave of educational reform: the right to an education; the difference between learning and schooling; the purposes of education.

In Rethinking African Educational Development, Elsa Wiehe writes about her own experiences within the context of a girls’ scholarship program that was implemented in over 40 African countries. Wiehe investigates the way in which African educational development has been historically portrayed. She notes that in her discussions with the girls, they often describe their experiences using the same narrative employed by the organizations that provide educational opportunities for them.

Figure I.1 Reproduced with permission of Elsa Wiehe.

1

A Story of Hegemony: The Globalization of Western Education

Alan S. Canestrari and Margaret M. Foster

Introduction

Recently, Tumeko, a bright, young, beginning South African teacher was chosen to present at a youth movement conference in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As she lamented the re‐emerging xenophobic violence and misunderstanding in Alexandra, her home township outside of Johannesburg, she called upon young people everywhere to re‐direct their energies and voices for peace, understanding, and tolerance. She urged her generation to lead their nations into a future of economic prosperity, political stability, and social justice through participatory governance and development. In post apartheid South Africa, this is no easy task. Tumeko’s generation, like others around the world, remains marginalized, still struggling for adequate basic public education and equality. Tumeko, targeted to attend the LEAP Math and Science School, is one of the high potential students to be selected. Publicly funded, and privately managed, every LEAP performance‐based contract school is partnered with a more privileged school and one other township school. As is often the case, schools like LEAP are also supported by grants from charitable foundations whose mission is to help transform the lives of poor children through a variety of global health and educational initiatives. LEAP, and many programs like it, draws support from a variety of sources in South Africa. It partners with Teach for Africa, Bridge International Academies, and the South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition (SAESC) among others. The SAESC was first formed in 2010 and initially funded by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, one of the organizations that is investing billions of dollars to help transform the lives of children living in poverty. Tumeko is one of the fortunate who have been granted this opportunity (LEAP, 2015).

What should Tumeko and others make of this? How have she and others become intertwined in the global goals of the LEAP Math and Science Schools, the Dell Foundation, and larger global forces? To what extent do all benefit from the relationship? Might this relationship, and others like it, shed light on the historical impact and aims of Western education? Do the aims offer transcendence and transformation for people and society? Or, are they purposes shaped by oligarchical responses to shifting social, political, and economic developments of the time? Finally, have the aims of Western education always been defined and controlled by dominant forces for the purposes of social, political, economic, and or moral control?

To answer these and related questions, we must investigate the emergence and current domination of neoliberal free‐market ideology and the process of globalization, what Chomsky pointed to as the defining social, political economic paradigm of our time (Chomsky, 1999, p. 7). We define globalization as an intentional plan for global interconnectedness. It has evolved as a strategy to control cultural, political, and economic outcomes around the world. Still unfamiliar to most, the term neoliberalism, remains mostly unknown to many of the very merchants that market it. Make no mistake, the power brokers who promote their neoliberal principles hope to develop what is already an evolving grip on the world economy. The executors support its underlying imperatives to reduce the size of government, expand global markets, lower taxes on the wealthy, increase profit, attack collective bargaining, reduce regulations, dismantle social welfare programs, and privatize what we have historically referred to as public education.

The latter twentieth century witnessed increasing alarm, as did Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom (1962), that the creation of wealth and the resulting profit is the essence of democracy. A government that pursues anti‐market policies is antidemocratic. In many ways, capitalism has become synonymous with democracy, an idea that evidently has been embraced by political parties in the United States and elsewhere. It is spread by powerful global forces and facilitated by technology and education in order to effect cultural, political, and economic outcomes around the world. For certain, the blurred line between capitalism and democracy has undermined participatory democracy: This is not new, nor has it ever been neutral.

For centuries, the powerful have attempted to exert spheres of influence over the less powerful. The foundational elements of neoliberalism and globalization are similar to the forms of domination of the past. It is marked by a broadening of the laissez‐faire economics and an extension of the colonization and imperialistic models of the past but with a more, subtle, nuanced, but is no less a dangerous physical and ideological model of domination. The teachers, students, and members of communities around the world, including Tumeko’s, are influenced by this educational feature of neoliberalism and globalization to set aside their customs, beliefs, and experiences in order to accept the best way to live, to learn, to teach, and to prosper. Education is offered, as it always has been, as an amelioration, as an instrument of social and economic justice but, it is, of course, defined and operationalized by powerful forces and institutions. It is Western education that has become one of the vehicles that spread this ideology internationally. So, how has Western education, as an instrument of domination, always been one of the tools of empire building? How has it been used as a means of socialization and acculturation of the dominated to take their intended roles for the purposes of cultural reproduction and the common good of the state or empire and preservation of the status quo?

A great arc of potentialities exists for the West, as in all cultures, to develop its own unique personality writ large that will be transmitted by various instruments of acculturation (Benedict 1959, p. 46). The unfolding history of the West provides us with some clues to the roots of education that have evolved and still underpin contemporary educational goals, policies, and practices. For the West, education has always been an instrument of social change but, in its varied forms, it has also promoted social control and cultural reproduction; a hegemony defined by powerful people, organizations, and institutions. Our intention in this chapter is to illuminate, through the lens of historical moments, the aims of Western education by linking these historical moments with contemporary educational events in order to demonstrate their relevance and connections to modern day education. These threads, woven through the fabric of the very foundations of education provide points that frame the discourse of ideological hegemony, compliance, accountability, national interests, and economic imperatives which have deep historical roots; characteristics of the past that remain relevant to the modern day underpinnings of education.

Ancient Threads

Tracing its foundations to Greek and Roman origins, provides the opportunity to discover some of the structures, methods, and themes, or, the cultural threads so firmly woven into Western civilization and its educational systems. For most of us, the history of ancient Greece began in school with our first introduction to the vivid, enchanting world of the immortal Greek gods. We imagined Zeus hurling thunderbolts at monsters, Hercules engaged in impossible labors, and we learned of the fate of Medusa’s vain struggle with Athena. We recited, sing in me muse and through me tell the story of that man… from Homer’s Odyssey as we were captivated by the song of the adventures of our tormented hero. Generations of schoolchildren delighted in these magical images, tales of strength, and beauty (Gombrich, 1985). Later, we were introduced to the Greek philosophers’ views on the nature of man; the start of our own completive thoughts on the meaning of life.

There is no debate over what might be considered the most influential of all Greek contributions to Western thought. It is the establishment of a logical, orderly, and methodological study of philosophy (Cahill, 2003). Initially, delineated by the works of pre‐Socratic philosophers and later made permanent by the classical reasoning of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the wisdom and the force of Western philosophy holds permanent sway in educational curricula and instruction.

Socrates, often considered one of the first documented teachers of the youth, impressed upon his students the importance of experience and an encouragement of a love of learning (George, 2015). His pedagogy, a method of scientific problem posing, hypothesis and unceasing, but disciplined questioning sought, as it does today, to uncover truth in the affairs of humans. Like Socrates, the twentieth‐century progressive philosopher John Dewey (1938) emphasized the importance of lived experience in the investigation of the real world in order to construct and reconstruct meaningful knowledge as a stimulus to democracy. But this experience is not common to all students. As Brazilian educator Paulo Freire warned in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1993), the tyranny of strict didactic approaches to teaching and learning ultimately minimizes, discourages and obstructs transformative learning experiences especially of the poor. Further, he contended that one of the roots of oppression is a teacher‐student relationship that offers little in the way of transformative power. He stated:

The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to fill the students with the contents of his narration – contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.

p. 57

He adds that, rather than posing authentic problems to be solved, many teachers suffer from this narration sickness choosing a tabula rasa view of children and implementing a bank deposit approach, to teach and communicate with students. Nonetheless, the Socratic method, has been utilized by generations of teachers who unwittingly fail to equate the approach with critical thinking and the questioning of the societal order. Sadly, Dewey’s call for discovery learning, which initially gave rise to very promising inquiry‐based instruction has, in many places, fallen from grace. And, ironically, Socrates, gadfly of the state, was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth much like today’s liberal educators are reviled for their critiques of the status quo and current neoliberal attempts at educational reform.

Through Socratic dialogues, Plato conveyed the importance of philosophy as the compass for the philosopher kings, who he advised, would be the just and rightful guardians of the ideal state. They, Plato insisted, would receive an appropriate education that would groom them to rule a moral society (Binder, 1990). He expounded upon the dangers to freedom and the obstructionist effects of the unexamined life on the individual as well as the state. Plato, again influenced by his mentor, cautioned that enforced learning will not stay in the mind that the compulsion to force‐feed understandings to children without care or tact will result in a failure in recollection or misunderstanding. He advised the following: So avoid compulsion, and let your children’s lessons take the form of play. This will help you see what they are naturally fitted for (Barrow 2007, p. 40). While Plato emphasized lifelong learning and the importance of early childhood education especially in the form of play, he would also reserve advanced learning, what might be referred to as an academic education, for those he thought deserved it, the privileged few.

Aristotle reasoned that education could complete the individual as well, but like Plato, he believed that education should serve the cultural and political reproductive interests of the state to educate all citizens and to prepare only those, the aristocratic class, worthy to be educated and led (Pounds, 1968). Thomas Jefferson, himself influenced by Greek and Roman ideals, the architect of the University of Virginia and proponent of universal schooling for all, reserved advanced schooling for natural aristocrats. He once remarked that school could be used to identify governmental leaders by using primary education to rake a few geniuses from the rubbish (Mondale, 2001, p. 23) so that they (men) might attend secondary school and the university. Today, we refer to this belief in the capacities of the elite to rule as a meritocracy. We can find similar Periclean meritocratic sentiments during the Golden Age of Greece.

Pericles, the most prestigious and powerful member of the Greek ruling class, a meritocrat, presided over the eventual Hellenization or dispersion of Greek humanism across the Mediterranean world and ever expanding Western civilization (Richard, 2008). Western historians have woven a deterministic polemic that encompasses the principles of Athenian democracy and acknowledges the complementary importance of educating people to be Spartan‐like warrior citizens obligated to defend the state. The power of the polemic narrative endures as a model of indoctrination that ensures the feelings of the nationalism, patriotism, and allegiance will remain unquestioned in the necessary preservation the state. Of all of the gifts of ancient Greece to modern culture, arguably the greatest is democracy. The democratic tradition in city‐states such as Athens embodied the ideals of justice, equality, personal freedom, and just governance by the people. It would be these principles that would later inspire revolutions and subsequently influence the shaping and sustaining the democratic governments established by founding fathers across the globe (Richard, 2008). This paradigm would spread.

The ideas and works of the most prominent Greek thinkers were adapted by Mediterranean cultures. Greek art, literature, architecture, and education spread far and wide throughout the known world as the Hellenistic educational system gained much interest and significance in the Roman state. The schools in Rome were intentionally modeled after their Greek counterparts as students learned the Greek language, read Greek authors such as Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides, imitated Greek athletics, and generally absorbed the Greek culture. Martin Bloomer (2011, p. 2) writes, For Romans of the classical period, education was a Greek import, and they somewhat mistily contrasted an education founded on literary texts and conducted by Greek speakers beginning in the third century B.C. In Rome, education was very much dominated and controlled by the family through private schooling (Pounds, 1968). Strides were made to educate citizens in the liberal arts, republicanism, and the Roman system of law but eventually, the Greek language and philosophy lost prominence as more emphasis was placed on the rote memorization of Latin grammar. Even centuries ago, the question over the purpose of schooling existed: To memorize organized bodies of knowledge or to learn for meaning?

Clouded by the romantic polemic advanced by our teachers, much was hidden from our view. Despite the considerable influence of Greek and Roman philosophy, democracy, law and education on civilization, there was a caveat: The existence of slavery. Classroom discourse around the existence of slavery did not exist and if it did, it had little or no consequence on what we were expected to learn … memorize. We did not challenge this reductionism and our teachers were not solely to blame either, for we all naively accepted the prescribed curriculum, essentially in the form of lectures and texts that transmitted content along with the unstated but effective distribution of norms, values, and attitudes (Giroux 1981, p. 72); a hidden curriculum embedded in the structure of schooling.

Hidden was the fact that Greek democracy, in its limited form, was possible only through the bondage of others. The peculiar institution, what Kenneth Stampp (1956) labeled centuries later, is what allowed Athenian democracy to exist. While the aristocracy, ascribed as free citizens, with all their entitlements tended to the tasks of governance and war, the middle class tended to its artisan or managerial charges, and, the slaves labored, tending to all else. Interestingly, in Rome, Christian slaves often were allowed to teach as long as they did not proselytize (Pounds 1968, pp. 63–68).

According to Plutarch, Free birth is the honorable treasure chest of free speech. Further he noted, that the vision of education as emancipatory … is severely curtailed by the doctrines of eugenics (Bloomer 2011, pp. 67–68). The right to education was granted only to those of free blood and birth as determined by the ruling class. As Winfield (2007) points out, eugenic ideology has grown out of centuries of racial thinking which has provided self‐proclaimed superior groups with a set of beliefs and practices used to stratify, control, subjugate, and brutalize others labeled, in one way or another, as inferior (p. 64). Today, remnants of eugenic ideology and practice exist in our educational system and reform agenda. The fitness of students to learn still swirls around the achievement gap debate. Firmly entrenched in the day to day operation of schools is the sorting, ranking, and tracking of students into age and ability batches based upon standardized test scores. So, transcendence through education remains intentionally unattainable or impeded for most.

Thread of Christianity

Speculation with regard to the fall of the Roman Empire (e.g. Gibbon, Heather, Goldsworthy, Perkins and others) continues. The effects, more often than not, amount to reductionist responses that usually involve some memorized list of singular factors like barbarian invasions, slave revolts, corruption or decadence, or a combination of them all. But the true narrative remains elusive; much more complicated than our school recollections. Theories abound. But, for certain, Rome declined, and so did its system of schools collapse (Power 1991, p. 104), marking the beginning of the hegemony of education by the Church.

As a result of the evolution of democratic principles and modern day legislation and judicial decisions, some have come to believe that schooling is a secular activity. But the thread of Christianity still runs through education in both explicit and implicit ways. Explicitly, the battle over school prayer in schools, school choice, faith based initiatives, vouchers, for example, rages on. Implicitly, it can be argued that Judeo‐Christian values and practices were very much embedded in the Western sense of education as the roles of teacher and learner remain closely related to the work of early religious orders (Burke and Segal, 2015).

The Middle Ages, the time between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, was a time when the most powerful institution of its time, the Roman Catholic Church, would dominate, seize control, manipulate the monarchs of the era, unify the people under its paternal domination, and impact the evolution of education (Burns 1963, pp. 275–276). It was during this time that the Church, through its monasteries, became the centers of education, literacy, and rule. The first standardized, formalized teaching and learning came to being in the form of monastic schools that created a standard curriculum of religious studies as preparation for future study in philosophy and theology. Trained as scholars, the monks, aside from the copying and the illumination of manuscripts, were charged with establishment of the early liberal arts: Grammar, rhetoric, logic; the keys to knowledge; and the disciplines of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Formal instruction in the liberal arts was, of course, reserved for the chosen who were called to serve the Church. Most remained illiterate. The European culture, like learning remained essentially dark.

But, slowly, monastic schools would be surpassed by better quality cathedral schools that gradually were transformed into the notable universities at Oxford, Cambridge, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Bologna and Paris, for example. At the University of Bologna, instruction existed within an association of like‐minded students, while in Paris students studied under the tutelage of scholars in the art, theology, law, and medicine each led by a dean. But, university students were often without books. The learning process amounted to taking extensive notes on wax tablets from the master’s lecture and then analyzing and discussing them later. Learning would be acquired through rote memorization as opposed to reading or research; not unlike the experience of some university students today. Again, universities were reserved for the most skilled, talented, and most affluent of the social strata. Powerful people, in their own self‐interest, looked to identify the best and the brightest for the academic life of the universities. This left other students and those not quite privileged enough to attend, to work towards artisan crafts and apprenticeships (Boyd, 1966). This is a trend that has continued well past the establishment of monastic schools and medieval universities and into a brighter period in European history.

Threads of Intellectual and Cultural Movements

A determined revolt against the cramping narrowness of medievalism (Boyd 1966, p. 159) specifically, the excessive dogma of the Church and the strict, traditional Aristotelian scholasticism of medieval universities led, in part, to a new humanistic energy and freedom that suddenly burst forth in Europe. This revival of classical antiquity, the Renaissance, quickly consumed Italy and later flooded the rest of Western Europe and beyond. It propelled the Western world back to the ideal Greek paideia which still informs the principal characteristics of contemporary perennialist educational philosophy and curricula today.

Renaissance achievements in art, architecture, literature, science, politics, religion, and education impacted commerce, the growth of cities, and a new revival of classical studies in cathedral and monastic schools (Burns 1963, p. 385). The movement sparked skeptical attitudes which broadened secular teaching at the expense of the ecclesiastical. Supported by some of the wealthiest merchant families, despots of Italian city‐states and patrons of the arts and learning, like the Medicis of Florence, the Sforzas of Milan, and the Estes of Ferrara (385) helped to endow a gradual escape from the other‐worldliness of the Middle Ages (Boyd 1966, p. 212). The velocity of this escape would expand algorithmically as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press disseminated the works of Renaissance artists and authors like Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, William Shakespeare, and many others across Europe and later across the world. The explosion of literacy, the revival of heliocentric theory and secular reasoning and logic would open the universe and threaten the economic, political, and cultural status quo and would ultimately provide the impetus for a Reformation of the Church.

Reformers, led by Martin Luther, valued the role of education, in shepherding the Church and society away from abuses of the Catholic Church, particularly, the sale of indulgences, and back towards a simpler, uncorrupted arrangement, were committed to the schooling of the young. Luther, from his post in Wittenberg, recommended that German councilmen and citizens embrace their Christian responsibility to nurture a literate community quoting scripture that God, …commanded our fathers, that they should make them known (teach God’s laws) to their children, that the generation to come might know them (Psalm 78:5–7). He also cautioned that parents must ensure training in the faith and obedience to all in authority over them, through corporal punishment if necessary. His scriptural but secular message was clear; parents are responsible for education of their children and it is the role of the state to promote civic education (Faber 1998, pp. 1–4).

As the Protestant Reformation intensified with the secession of northern European nations, the Catholic Church countered with reforms of its own. One of particular significance was led by, then, a new religious order founded by Ignatius of Loyola called the Society of Jesus. Before his death, the Jesuit order had established hundreds of universities and schoolhouses throughout countries all over the world (Boyd 1966, pp. 203–204). Long before the Reformation ended, Jesuit missionaries were posted in Africa, Asia, and North and South America. Loyola’s Soldiers of Christ used education as a strategy to convert millions of pagans to the faith (Burns 1963, p. 468).

The reforms of the eighteenth century inspired an intellectual revolution that historians refer to as the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment. The thoughts and actions of men, from this point forward, would be defined by concepts, now very familiar to people all over the world. Emerging during this period were notions that transformed and challenged the establishments of the religion, government and economy. Sir Isaac Newton, arguably the founder of the Enlightenment, rejected superstitious prescientific ideas, offered a radically new view: A universe based upon immutable laws of nature. Openly contradicting Descartes’ doctrine of inborn ideas, John Locke famously insisted that men are born tabula rasa, blank sheets of paper that would be inscribed by experience. He defended religious tolerance and is well known for the liberal political theory that inspired revolt by his arguments that all men are free and entitled to govern themselves (Pounds 1968, pp. 174–187). The literary works of Enlightenment philosophers further promoted familiar modern values and perspectives.

Voltaire, advocate of individual liberty, free speech, and antagonist of political and religious tyranny, popularized the ideas of the Enlightenment in his poems and literary works particularly Candide which was set in the peaceful South American utopia of El Dorado.

Rousseau’s Émile told the life story of a fictional man named Émile. In it, Rousseau traces the course of Émile’s development and the education he receives, an education designed to create in him all the virtues of Rousseau’s idealized natural man, uncorrupted by modern society. According to Rousseau, the natural goodness of a man can be nurtured and maintained only according to this highly prescriptive model of education which differed sharply from all accepted forms of the time. It was Rousseau’s demand for Émile that profoundly influenced Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a Swiss social reformer and educator, known as the father of modern education, father of pedagogy (Boyd 1966, pp. 286–289).

A revolutionary of sorts, Pestalozzi spread the radical notions that all people can learn and all have the right to an education; ideas that squarely contradicted the stratified, strictly monitored, disciplined philosophy and authoritarian practices that preceded him. The modern era of education started with him. His spirit and ideas led to educational reforms in Europe that can still be found in the missions of schools of education globally. It was Pestalozzi, in his novel Leonard and Gertrude that stimulated modern day pedagogical theory and practice, as he described how Gertrude, Leonard’s mother, would instruct him in authentic, constructivist lessons around their home and village. Much of what we think of as the basic concept of elementary education can be attributed to his work with neglected children. In his orphanage in Zurich, in an effort to promote self‐reliance through instruction in basic agriculture and trades, he promoted ideas about child centered education that were introduced to teacher education programs both in Europe, the United States, and are currently spread globally, although one wonders sometimes about the voracity of the child centered perspective (Boyd 1966, pp. 316–328).

Thread of Industrialism

As the nations of Europe consolidated power, the influence of the Church waned. Drawing upon the work of German idealist, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was influenced by the philosophies of Locke and Rousseau, and Pestalozzi, Prussia adopted a scientific educational system that prescribed a standardized curriculum and instruction. Fichte popularized the idea that the state is everything and that the individual has to subordinate his will…to the corporate state. At the time, the term corporate was loosely defined as a stratified society with all its status and role and leveling characteristics (Bowen, 1981, p. 321). Consequently, the children of the elite were sent to realsschulen where they were educated to play their roles in the policy making class (p. 325). The underclass majority went to volksschulen where they were to learn harmony, obedience, freedom from stressful thinking and how to follow orders (Uncommon Sense 1991, p. 2) not unlike the experience of poor and minority school children in our current system of education. The principles of the Prussian system are embodied in the Western industrial, factory model which relies heavily on standardization and compartmentalization of curriculum, scripted instruction, rote memorization, compliance and ultimately the suppression of knowledge.

The problem, according to Sir Kenneth Robinson (2008), is that the current system of education works for some, the academics, but not for most. As Robinson points out, our current system of education, was conceived during the Enlightenment and designed to serve the economic imperatives of an industrial world. This model has been critiqued for its inability to foster curricular diversity, creative approaches to instruction, while enforcing heavy handed high stakes standardized testing, the deskilling and disempowerment of teachers to decide what is best for children (Di Giulio, 2003; Ravitch, 2010; Taubman, 2009). A climate of command and control over progressive models of teaching remains. Despite the critique, the Prussian model of state‐run schools, established standards of instruction, trained teachers, and authoritarian pedagogical practices (Rury, 2016) was widely disseminated and promoted by university scholars who were schooled in Germany. It spread throughout Europe and eventually American educators, like Horace Mann, were fascinated.

The Thread of Free Public Education

Following a trip to Germany to investigate the aristocratic Prussian Education Model, education reformer Horace Mann, in an effort to reduce reliance on private schools, lobbied for state support and control of schools. But, Mann was met with tremendous opposition from religious groups, particularly Catholic leaders, concerned about how secularism would erode their faith. They thought that non‐Catholic schools without connections to churches were Godless and immoral (Rury 2016, p. 66). And, politicians vehemently challenged the radical idea of tax supported public schools as well. Convincing leaders that education should be the responsibility of the state and that taxation on the community as a whole might be the only just path to provide education for all children was and still is in many ways an ongoing battle. Funding education remains a contentious debate.

As Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts Schools, Mann traveled from town to town and at various times issued reports that assessed the condition of school buildings, often in disrepair; curriculum, often weak; resources, often limited; and the quality of teachers, very often questionable. While public school attendance did not increase much, Mann was able to advance his agenda of gradually separating schools from churches, extending the school year and instituting the establishment of normal schools for the training of teachers (Rury 2016, pp. 66–67). But, through Mann’s persistence, the common school movement spread throughout Massachusetts and gradually to other states. And, by the mid‐nineteenth century, the business class began to acknowledge the importance of and promote this factory‐like model of schooling as a path to a trained workforce, efficiency, profit, and social control (Spring, 1972) that they needed.

As the nation emerged from the Civil War and Reconstruction, it rapidly moved towards industrialization. By the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, immigrants were streaming into cities to satisfy corporate desire for cheap labor. Could the newcomers be Americanized? Could they be socialized to adopt the American values? Could the aliens become loyal citizens? Could they be trusted? Could they be transformed? Educated? Civilized? These are the questions that arise and persist across the globe with every wave of immigrants who arrive. The outcomes of these questions, in many others, still rest squarely on the shoulders of educators. In response, the school system was intentionally created in the image of the factory (Spring, 1972). Bells, schedules, tracking, what Tyack and Cuban (1995) have referred to as the grammar of schooling exists within the mechanistic routine and ritual of the schoolroom. As industrialists demanded more profit through cutting costs they discovered the principles and practices of Taylorism. Frederick Taylor, an efficiency expert, scientifically analyzed how management could control every detail of the worker’s energy and time in the factory so as to ensure uninterrupted work, standardized tasks, and the interchangeability of workers (Zinn 1995, pp. 316–317). It is difficult not to note the similarities of Taylor’s investigations with those of the efficiency outcomes of California Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study’s (BTES) that introduced allocated time, time on task and accountable talk, for example, into the lexicon of American schooling (Berliner and Tikunoff, 1976). The urban‐industrial era marked the legislation of compulsory education laws aimed directly at the new immigrants so that they might be assimilated, socialized in the ever expanding number of comprehensive American high schools. But, still access to education remained out of the reach of some.

Thread of Human Capital

The crucible of the Second World War left unimaginable physical, emotional devastation and uncertainty in its path. Incessant bombardment had leveled Europe and Japan. Homes, institutions and lives would need to be rebuilt. For many, the victory over fascism did not result in the immediate realization of a peaceful and secure postwar world like they had hoped. Instead, what emerged was a world of hunger, hopelessness, and fear especially, over what a cold war between global super powers might create (Burns 1963, p. 969).

But, even against the threat of a nuclear holocaust, there still existed some idealism that efforts might be made by thoughtful and courageous people to create new postwar opportunities. As the war ended in places around the globe, independence movements began to take root. Revolts against colonialism had begun in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. The nature of world war itself, involved colonial natives who had risked their lives, provided an unintended outcome; the steady realization that they, all along, held the power and will to break the cycle of occupation and oppression. Though the independence movements were not without violence, they did result in the establishment of self‐determination; the freedom to establish systems of governance, economic and social institutions, including the education.

The idealism extended to the United States as well. Having emerged as a global power after the war and forced out of its isolationist past, the nation was now obligated to fulfill its role as a model of democratic values for all nations around the world to emulate. Unlike every other country engaged in the war, the United States had no visible scars other than the somber acknowledgement of the sacrifice of so many young lives, but there was no physical debris, no wreckage in the country itself. For the United States, the immediate postwar era was a time of economic growth, prosperity and social change.

Despite the economic good news for the country, the war also had an unintended outcome in that some African Americans who fought courageously for their country in World War II earning countless medals came home to be relegated once again to a lesser status. The familiar narrative, one the military itself had begun to cast off during the war in favor of more equitable arrangements, was once again firmly in place which would have economic and social consequences for generations. African Americans, after volunteering to serve in big numbers, returned home to discover that there had been no change in the cycle of poverty, disenfranchisement, and discrimination that they had left behind. Their war experience had, just as it had for colonial people, provided African American veterans with their own long overdue discovery that they had the agency to shape a new narrative and stage to demand their civil rights. The movement’s first victory came with the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that struck down the notion of separate but equal that had been established in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson and had provided a rationale for the decades of Jim Crow that followed. Segregated schools were declared to be, by definition, unequal although arguments can be made about the reemergence of segregated schools today (Rury 2016, p. 155). Nevertheless, the contradiction between the values and norms of democracy were illuminated by African American struggle for equality which provided the ideological foundation and inspiration for educational struggles by Latinos, Asian Americans, women, the disabled and, currently, the LBGT community of the 1960s and 1970s that are still unfolding, unfinished. But, are schools more segregated today as Kozol (2005) suggests in a Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America?

Thread of Accountability

The 1980s would signal a seminal moment in educational reform. The standards assessment, accountability, and school choice movement has substantively affected every aspect of schooling, teaching, and teacher education in the United States and by definition around the world to this day. As Taubman points out in Teaching by Numbers: Deconstructing the Discourse of Standards and Accountability (2009) the reform movement, a result of the emergence of the audit culture and its reliance on data‐driven instruction, echoing to the mantras of standards and accountability has taken control of education. In the process, teachers, parents, schools and schooling have been demonized. It may be argued that President Ronald Reagan, who never intended to be an education President, set the movement in motion as his rhetoric was transformed into action.

Ronald Reagan’s original goal of eliminating the U.S. Department of Education after his election in 1980, was swept aside a year later when Terrell Bell, his Secretary of Education, against the President’s wishes, went ahead and commissioned a study of the condition of American education. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) published its findings in, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Symcox, 2002). Reagan, added to his bully pulpit agenda by conflating education and the economy. After Reagan, a major shift in how Americans thought of education occurred. Equity would give way to national economic development and individual improvement (Rury, 2016). The hyperbolic alarm sounded:

The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. National Commission. If an unfriendly foreign power has attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that it exists today, we might as well have viewed it as an act of war.

Rury 2016, p. 193

As a result of the close relationship between policy‐makers both in the United States and the United Kingdom, President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began to embrace neoliberal principles of global economic planning to order to influence the free market. They realized that workers could be manipulated by the state in the interest of the marketplace (Spring 1998, p. 127). Incidentally, Milton Friedman, who we alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, advised, by design, both Reagan and Thatcher on economic and related educational issues. The leaders then concluded that they … could argue that the state should intervene to teach religious and moral values to maintain a free society while advocating school choice as conservatives cried out for national standards and curriculum (Spring 1998, p. 127). The views of teachers and unions were not to be trusted. Educational insiders were out. The attack was on. Impose the strict performance management standards on teachers, demand results, more value for the money spent, and root out failing teachers and schools while instructionally ignoring critical thinking strategies like Socratic discourse and developmental learning. The reforms ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher seem to have become the norm for leaders that followed.

A sequence of self‐proclaimed education presidents followed. Result and business oriented, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, supported by a bi‐partisan call for better schools through higher standards and increased accountability, and along with educational reformers, policy‐makers and business leaders would, opportunistically, extend the fear and unbridled attack on schools, schooling and teachers as A Nation at Risk continued to dictate the direction of the conservative reform agenda.

George Bush Sr. set a series of progressive goals proclaiming that all children in America will start school ready to learn. In addition, he boasted that the United States would lead the world in math and science; graduation high school graduation rates would soar; and that reform policies and practices would solve the seemingly intractable problems of drugs, alcohol, and violence in our schools