英语大学校园与文化

Talk about AMERICAN SCHOOL REFORM

人文社会科学学院历史系11941204

This is the book that I look for and read, its name is AMERICAN SCHOOL REFORM----Progressive, Equity, and Excellence Movements, 1883-1993.The book is written by Maurice R. Berube. First, before the contents and the author said this book is written for his grandsons, Nicholas and James Berube.This book is first published in 1994, printed in the United States of American. Though the book seems not very popular even you may say it’s out only judge from its published time. Yes, it is not a new book, but when you have read it, I think you will not think it’s out any more.

Before introduce the book, I want to introduce the author, MAURICE R.BERUBE is Professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling at Old Dominion University. He is the author of American President and Education (1991), Teacher Politics: The Influence of Unions (1988), and Education and Poverty: Effective Schooling in the United States and Cuba (1984), and many more, all published by Greenwood. He is very famous in American education and he issue a lot of thesis’s about education.

Marilyn Gittel,Professor of Political Science Director, Howard Samuels State Management and Policy Center The Graduate School and University Center The City University of New York ever said :“In the Ocean

Hill-Brownsville community control movement of the 1960s,the vision of

Black empowerment dramatically clashed with the concept of professionalism inherited from the Progressive era. The conflict highlighted how social movements have structured the national debate about educational reform. By tracing the history of these social movements, and their impact on education ,Maurice Berube has given us a significantly new insight into the differing points of view about the future of our schools”The book is not very thick and it is not more than two hundred pages .the book is relative simple. It consists of eight chapters, Chapter one is The Progressive Movement; Chapter Two is Progressive Education: The Matrix of It All; Chapter Three is John Dewey: America’s Educational Philosopher; Chapter Four is The Civil Rights Movement and Equity Reform; Chapter Five is Community Control Revisited; Chapter Six is The Drift to Privatization; Chapter Seven is The School Culture Wars; Chapter Eight is Conclusion.

From the title of the book, we can conclude that the book introduce the history of American Education Reform completely and systematically.

I choose the book, the first reason is that the book is relative simple that is easy to read, it has no many unfamiliar words and it’s not very thick.

I think everyone can finish it, it’s also not difficult to understand, and every sentence is relative short. It has few very long and difficult sentences.

We talk about the advantages of this book first, despite of the fact that the book is very thick, but the book cites a lot of materials.

First, it take in a lot of books, there are about one hundred books were quoted by Maurice R. Berube in the famous book, such as Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House. New York: Macmillan Co.1945.—.Democracy and Social Ethics.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1964.Aronowitz, Stanley, and Henry https://www.360docs.net/doc/0d214089.html,cation under Siege: A Conservative, Liberal and Radical Debate over Schooling .South Hadley, Mass: Bergin and Garvey, 1985…and so on. And all kinds of reports and unpublished materials. For example, Barner, Geoge.The Ocean

Hill-Brownsville Community View the News Coverage. New York: Center for New York City Affairs, December 1968 .Many articles were absorbed in the book. there are also about one hundreds .the author also look up many newspapers、magazines and newsletters, they are very popular on that time. To write well the book, Maurice R. Berube even makes many interviews by himself. At the same time the author quoted many letters and memoranda. We have to believe that concentration is the essence.

As the same time, this book is very close contact with reality; we can benefit a lot from the book. From the start of the book, we can learn from the sentence—For my grandsons, Nicholas and James Berube. This book is specially written for ourselves not for others. After reading the book, we are likely to think it tell us how to do in the future. It doesn’t have the difficult theory so that we can’t understand; it takes all kinds of examples. The book doesn’t discard the theory. The book clearly tells us the history of

American school reform Progressive Equity and Excellence Movements from1883 to1993.

Second, this book puts forward many creative ideas, in the author’s opinion, the school reform is not isolated, it relate to many other social movement. If we want to talk about and solve the school reform problem, we need to put school reform into the whole society not see it isolate. Maurice R. Berube think that There are a number of observations to be made about the similarities of the three great educational reform movements. These reform movements were the result of outside social pressures. No major educational reform movement in the United States was caused by intrinsic educational forces. This phenomenon prompts speculation that deep-seated educational reform cannot occur with out larger movements within society. progressivism meant reform ,like the Civil Rights Movement ,was essentially a moral campaign to fulfill the American democratic promise .It acted a important role in the American historic. One cannot fully comprehend the great educational reform movements without also considering the social conditions from which they arose. Progressive education, then, was in flounced by the progressive movement.

The last, this book brings together the wisdom of many famous. It analyzes comprehensively American education reform’s present situation

and the future. In Maurice R. Berube’s opinion, the greatest weakness in educational reform was the lack of a clear educational vision transcending the social pressures that created major educational reform. Educational reform become fragmented, we now have thinkers who specialize. Amy Gutman on democracy and education; Allan Bloom on the great ideas of western civilization; Henry Giroux on the resistance of dominated grops; Lawrence Kohlberg on moral education.

However, the book also is not perfect, it also has some disadvantages. Despite the fact that it has comprehensively analyzed the United States education reform present situation, but Maurice R. Berube didn’t put word the solution to the problem. Because the book is so thick that Maurice R. Berube cannot analyzed the problem deeply.

After all, the book is a famous book about American education reform; it is a book that is worth to reading. If you want to know about American education reform, you need to read the book carefully. If you want to reform Chinese education, you need to study this famous book.