Democracy’s Schools is written by Johann Neem, an Indian immigrant brought to America as a toddler. He credits public schools with making him an American and giving a common experience to America’s increasingly diverse young generations. Perhaps being raised by immigrant parents shielded Neem from some of the tired partisan scrum surrounding issues of education in America. His book is objective in its recounting of history, and fair and incisive in its analysis. It will be satisfying in many ways for skeptics of public education, but it may be a more important read for public education’s less critical cheerleaders.
Most of the book tells the story of the public education reform movement in the nineteenth century, prominently featuring Horace Mann, with developments in the broader history of public education interwoven throughout.
Neem is clearly a supporter of public education, but is surprisingly sympathetic to skeptics. Two examples stand out: first, his discussions of localism—local control of school curriculum and hiring decisions and the role of parents in schools. And second, his shorter but perhaps more interesting chapter on Catholics and the issue of religion and sectarianism in public schools.
In his critique of the reformers, he notes more than once that they tended to give short shrift to parental involvement and to local administration, two factors that substantially helped public schools arise in the first place. “The greatest growth in school attendance before the Civil War took place before there was significant government oversight and taxes,” Neem notes. The very first public schools were administered locally, with the teacher and curriculum usually selected by the community of parents.
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