Why is education policy so contentious? Do conflicts over specific issues in schooling have anything in common? Are there general principles that can help us resolve these disputes? In this book the authors find the source of many debates over schooling in the multiple goals and internal contradictions of the national ideology we call the American dream. They also propose a framework for helping Americans get past acrimonious debates in order to help all children learn. The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided Americans for years, including...
Why is education policy so contentious? Do conflicts over specific issues in schooling have anything in common? Are there general principles that can ...
The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided Americans for years, including desegregation, school funding, testing, vouchers, bilingual education, and ability grouping. While these are all separate problems, much of the contention over them comes down to the same thing--an apparent conflict between policies designed to promote each student's ability to succeed and those designed to insure the good of all students or the nation as a whole. The authors show how policies to promote individual success too often benefit only those already privileged by...
The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided Americans for years, including desegregation, school funding, ...
Conventional wisdom and democratic theory hold that the best way to achieve controversial policy changes is in small, cautious steps and with participation of the various groups involved. Yet America's thirty years of experience with school desegregation shows this belief to be false. In this provocative new book, Jennifer Hochschild argues that when incremental and participatory methods are used to desegregate schools, both blacks and whites end up worse off--with little freedom and equality for blacks, much disruption and pain for both races, and few educational gains for anyone. However,...
Conventional wisdom and democratic theory hold that the best way to achieve controversial policy changes is in small, cautious steps and with particip...
The search for equality has been an enduring one in the United States. Yet there has been little significant change in the distribution of wealth over the generations, while the political ideology of socialism has been rejected outright by most people. In a sensitive rendering of data, Jennifer Hochschild discovers that it is the nonrich themselves who do not support the downward redistribution of wealth.
Using a long questionnaire and in-depth interviews, she examines the ideals and contemporary practices of Americans on the subject of distributive justice. She finds that both rich...
The search for equality has been an enduring one in the United States. Yet there has been little significant change in the distribution of wealth o...
The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this compassionate but frightening book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites...
The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the Am...
Irwin Garfinkel Sara S. McLanahan Jennifer L. Hochschild
Successful social policies for children are critical to America's future. Yet the status of children in America suggests that the nation's policies may not be serving them well. Infant and child mortality rates in the U.S. remain high compared to other western industrialized nations; child poverty rates have worsened in the past decade; poor health care, child abuse, and inadequate schooling and child care persist.
This book presents a new set of social policies designed to alleviate these problems and to help satisfy the needs of all children. The policies deal with the seven critical...
Successful social policies for children are critical to America's future. Yet the status of children in America suggests that the nation's policies...
