Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform Review

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Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform ReviewI'm a math teacher, and I decided to read this book because I'd like to have some strong background on the history of school reform as I try to understand the national debate on policies such as No Child Left Behind. Also, I'm deeply interested in creative answers to the issue of democratically educating the Underclass. This book met some of my needs, but I can't give it an unqualified recommendation.

Really, Ravitch devotes most of her efforts to giving a history of Progressivism in education. Consdierable time is spent on Dewey, Kilpatrick, and their followers. The book starts around the time of Eliot's Committee of Ten Report detailing how all should receive a college preparatory education and discusses how progressivism chipped away at this democratic ideal. There is a little bit of respect for Progressivism's desire to make classroom less dependent on rote memorization. But Ravitch gives an accurate critique of Progressivsm's ultimate consequences: in an effort to make the child's experience the center of the classroom and the focus of learning, the academic content of the curriculum was diluted. Ravitch clearly holds Progressivism to be largely responsible for why our nation lags behind other nations in most international evaluations of school quality. I learned from this book that Progressivism's core concepts have remained the same under different rhetorical incarnations. I also learned that ultimately, Ravitch considers Progressivism to be antidemocratic because it made college preparatory content optional; only the children of elites or the most highly motivated students opted for the rigorous college preparatory track. For those immigrants and minorities who desperaely needed college to gain access to the American mainstream, Progressivism's goal to satisfy the desires of the students [but not their parents!] had tragic consequences.

I have a few criticisms of this book. I don't think that much original scholarship was done for this book. Cremin and Krug, two noted historians, are often referred to. I think Ravitch's emphasis is different than prior scholarship in that she gives more room for the opponents of Progressivism. But I don't know how much is new.

I'm really critical over the focus on the educational establishment. So much of this book describes rhetorical debate between proponents and critics of reforms in the educational schools. As a teacher, I know that much of what ed schools desire doesn't get put into practice. I wanted to hear more of the voices of the students and the teachers who were most affected by the reforms.

Lastly, for a book that claims to focus on "a century" of school reform, the 60s were covered too quickly for my tastes. Brown
v Board of Ed is not introduced until page 367 and it gets about 15 pages. The debate over school busing is barely mentioned. Charter school issues and school choice, a key complement to the standards movement of the 90s is also barely mentioned. These were some of the issues that I care most about. The relative lack of discussion on these areas reveals that Ravitch is more interested in Progressive curriculum reform than reform efforts in school structure [introduciton of junior high schools is an exception to this]. Also, for those who seek to understand contemporary debates, the last 20-30 years is covered in a rather cursory fashion.

This book was a quality discussion of Progressivism and how it hijacked democratic rhetoric for covert and overt antidemocratic ends. It falls short of being a total history of school reform and it misses a valuable opportunity to introduces more voices of teachers, parents, and students into the traditional histories that usually emphasize the debates in the ed schools and the history of the bureaucrats.

I learned some stuff, but wanted to learn a lot more.

3 stars

--SDLeft Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform OverviewFor the past one hundred years, Americans have argued and worried about the quality of their schools. Some charged that students were not learning enough, while others complained that the schools were not furthering social progress. In Left Back, education historian Diane Ravitch describes this ongoing battle of ideas and explains why school reform has so often disappointed. She recounts grandiose efforts to use the schools for social engineering, even while those efforts diminished the schools' ability to provide a high-quality education for all children. By illuminating the history of education in the twentieth century, Left Back points the way to reviving American schools today.

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