Questions & Contentions week 2 - Assignment Example

American Public Education Curriculum This paper aims at analyzing the week’s reading, which is The Struggle of the American Curriculum, 1893 to 1958, b Kliebard (2004). Kliebard (2004) illustrates the struggles and conflicts in the management of the secondary and elementary curriculum between the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century. There exists the historiographical struggle in the education competing trends (Goldin, 2001). The book transfers the focus from the conventional intellectual history, to the empirical history illustrating reform agendas in the public education system.

This article illustrates the four distinct interest groups that struggled for control of schools for over seven decade duration, via the education curriculum (Parkerson, 1998). Humanists favored continuous development of the reasoning ability, and also western cultural practices. Developmentalists illustrated that the natural development progress of the child is the very important aspect, of scientifically determining teaching areas (Spring, 2008)). Social efficiency educators strived to ensure schools use scientific management methods education management; and to differentiate education in accordance to the perceived needs and abilities of students (Theobald, 2005).

Social meliorists favored using schooling as instrument of social development and progress (Kleibard, 2004). This academic paper analyzes the reality and perceptions of schooling in the society, at the end of nineteenth century. Other changes that started during the duration; like development of railroads, cities and even immigration reached crisis levels (Rury, 2002). The expanding mass media increased the increased popular anxieties. The journalist and other social investigators increasingly illustrated education and schools as joyless (Tyack, 2002).

The educators illustrated that the mine works like a muscle, and hence should be exercised continuously through education monotony like drills, verbatim recitations and harsh discipline (Kleiband, 2004). ReferencesGoldin, Claudia. (2001). "The Human-Capital Century and American Leadership: Virtues of the Past", Journal of Economic History.Kliebard, Herber. (2004). The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.Parkerson, Donald (1998). The Emergence of the Common School in the U.S. Countryside.

Edwin Mellen.Parkerson, Donald. (2001). Transitions in American Education: A Social History of Teaching. Routledge.Rury, John. (2002). “Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Schooling.” Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Spring, Joel. (2008). The American School: From the Puritans to No Child Left Behind. McGraw-Hill.Theobald, Paul. (2005). Call School: Rural Education in the Midwest to 1918. Southern Illinois U. Press.Tyack, David. (2002). “Managers of virtue: Public school leadership in America, 1820– 1980.

”American Education Journal.