David F. Labaree has spent the last twenty years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in the history of education and education policy and politics. Here, he brings together twelve of his key writings in one place. Starting with a specially written introduction, 'Getting It Wrong', which gives an ironic overview of how the ideas in his work have evolved over time and throws light on the process of scholarly production, the chapters cover such topics as:

• the structure of the educational system
• conflicting purposes of...

What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children--but all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way "this archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do."

Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown,...

This book is a comparative history that explores the social, cultural, and political formation of the modern nation through the construction of public schooling. It asks how modern school systems arose in a variety of different republics and non-republics across four continents during the period from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The authors begin with the republican preoccupation with civic virtue - the need to overcome self-interest in order to take up the common interest - which requires a form of education that can produce individuals who are capable of...