Forgotten Heroes of American Education: The Great Tradition of Teaching Teachers (Readings in Educational Thought) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593114478 ISBN 13: 9781593114473

Publisher: Information Age Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

This book is titled Forgotten Heroes of American Education because it contains representative writings by significant educators who challenged mainstream thinking. The editors of this volume believe that the work of these thoughtful and important educators deserves to be remembered. They have been forgotten because in the great pedagogical battles of the twentieth century, they lost. Time and again, they battled with their Progressivist colleagues over the purpose and goals of elementary and secondary education. Because they lost the arguments, their role as leaders and thinkers was almost completely ignored by historians of education, who identified with the winners. We think this was a grand mistake. To honor the legacy of these eight educators, we have written this book and entitled it Forgotten Heroes of American Education.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"Few aspects of educational reform are more crucial than improving the quality of teacher education. Null and Ravitch have gathered an impressive collection of essays from a group of pedagogical "dissidents" who, for almost a century, have advocated a different approach to teacher education than the one that has led to our current educational morass. This book should be required reading not just for teachers and teacher educators, but for anyone concerned about the future of education in this country." —Jeffrey Mirel, Professor of Educational Studies and Professor of History, University of Michigan

"Forgotten Heroes is a refreshing, provocative and timely contribution to the deliberations and debates about the future of teacher education. It is highly stimulating to read the work of "anti-progressivists" like Bagley, Kandel—and John Dewey himself, who was shocked by some of the excesses of his disciples and acolytes. Null and Ravitch have made a superb contribution to our policy and practice discussions of teacher education by reviving the work of these 'forgotten heroes.'" —Lee S. Shulman, President, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

"This splendid collection reminds me of a friend’s shelf: 'Books banned by the Nazis,' containing Freud, Marx, Kafka, Brecht, and a host of other outstanding thinkers and writers—much better authors than the ones the Nazis permitted. Is the analogy far fetched? Not entirely. Just as those earlier book-banners labeled authors 'Un-German,' so our schools of education now think it sufficient to label authors 'traditional' to consign them to oblivion—even when the writers gathered here aren’t currently traditional at all. In today’s education world, the writers in this collection are radical. This book contains some of the most profound writing about education that our country has produced." —E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Best-selling author of Cultural Literacy and Founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation

About the Author:

J. Wesley Null is a teacher educator, historian of education, and Assistant Professor in the School of Education and the Honors College at Baylor University. Before serving on the faculty at Baylor, he taught social studies in public schools in New Mexico and Texas. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Eastern New Mexico University. In 2001, he completed his Ph.D. degree at The University of Texas at Austin, where he studied the history of education and curriculum. At Baylor, he teaches history and philosophy of education in the School of Education and social science and great texts in the Honors College. He also teaches teacher education courses each semester at Waco High School. He is the author of A Disciplined Progressive Educator: The Life and Career of William Chandler Bagley (Peter Lang, 2003) and co-editor of Readings in American Educational Thought: From Puritanism to Progressivism (IAP, 2004). He serves as Editor of the American Educational History Journal.

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University. She is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and a member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She served on the National Assessment Governing Board, to which she was appointed by Secretary of Education Riley in 1997 and reappointed in 2001. From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of state and national academic standards. Before entering government service, she was Adjunct Professor of History and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the author of numerous books, including Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform (Simon and Schuster, 2000), The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Knopf, 2003), and The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980 (Basic Books, 1983). She is a director of the New York State Council for the Humanities and has received honorary degrees from eight institutions. A native of Houston, she is a graduate of the Houston public schools. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1975.

About this edition

• Publisher: Information Age Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1593114478
• ISBN 13: 9781593114473
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 656
• Editor: Null J. Wesley, Ravitch Diane