1. Thinking critically about history -- Interpreting school history: from the right to the left -- Purposes of educational history and its effect on public images and emotions regarding schools -- Themes in American educational history -- Globalization framework -- The effect of cultural and religious differences on schools -- Schools as managers of public thought -- Racial and ethnic conflict as a theme in school history -- The role in educational history of equality of opportunity and human capital -- Consumer and environmental education -- 2. Globalization and religion in colonial education -- Education and culture in colonial society -- The role of education in colonial society -- Historical interpretations of colonial education -- Authority and social status in colonial education -- Colonialism and educational policy -- Language and cultural conflict -- Native Americans: education as cultural imperialism -- Enslaved Africans: Atlantic Creoles -- Enslaved Africans: the plantation system -- The idea of secular freedom: freedom of thought and the establishment of academies -- Benjamin Franklin and education as social mobility -- The family and the child -- Conclusion -- 3. Nationalism, multiculturalism, and moral reform in the new republic -- World culture theorists -- The problem of cultural diversity -- Noah Webster: nationalism and the creation of a dominant culture -- Thomas Jefferson: a natural aristocracy -- Moral reform and faculty psychology -- Concepts of childhood: protected, working, poor, rural, and enslaved -- Charity schools, the Lancasterian system, and prisons -- Institutional change and the American college -- Public versus private schools -- Conclusion: continuing issues in American education -- 4. The ideology and politics of the Common School -- Three distinctive features of the Common School Movement -- Workingmen and the struggle for a republican education -- How much government involvement in schools? The Whigs and the Democrats -- The birth of the high school -- The continuing debate about the Common School ideal -- Conclusion -- 5. The Common School and the threat of cultural pluralism -- The increasing multicultural population of the United States -- Irish Catholics: a threat to Anglo-American schools and culture -- Slavery and freedom in the North: African Americans and school in the new republic -- Native Americans -- Conclusion --
6. Organizing the American school: teachers and bureaucracy -- The American teacher -- Revolution in teaching methods: object learning -- The evolution of bureaucracy: a global model -- The age-graded classroom -- McGuffey's Readers and the spirit of capitalism -- Conclusion -- 7. Multiculturalism and the failure of the Common School ideal -- Mexican Americans: race and citizenship -- Asian Americans: exclusion and segregation -- Native American citizenship -- Educational racism and deculturalization -- Citizenship for African Americans -- Issues regarding Puerto Rican citizenship -- Conclusion: setting the stage for the great Civil Rights Movement -- 8. Global migration and the growth of the welfare function of schools -- Immigration from southern and eastern Europe -- The Kindergarten Movement -- Home Economics: education of the new consumer woman -- School cafeterias, the American cuisine, and processed foods -- The Play Movement -- Summer school -- Social centers -- The New Culture Wars -- Resisting segregation: African Americans -- Resisting segregation: Mexican Americans -- Native American boarding schools -- Resisting discrimination: Asian Americans -- Educational resistance in Puerto Rico -- Conclusion: public schooling as America's welfare institution -- 9. Human capital: high school, junior high school, and vocational guidance and education -- The high school -- Vocational education -- Junior high school -- Adapting the classroom to the workplace: lesson plans -- Adapting the classroom to the workplace: progressivism -- Adapting the classroom to the workplace: stimulus-response -- Classroom management as preparation for factory life -- Historical interpretations: public benefit or corporate greed? -- Conclusion: the meaning of equality of opportunity -- 10. Scientific school management: testing, immigrants, and experts -- Scientifically managed schools: meritocracy and reducing public control -- Professionalizing educational administration -- Measurement, democracy, and the superiority of Anglo-Americans -- Closing the door to immigrants: the 1924 Immigration Act -- "Backward" children and special classrooms -- Eugenics and the Age of Sterilization -- The university and meritocracy -- Conclusion --
11. The politics of knowledge: teachers' unions, the American Legion, and the American way
Teachers versus administrators: the American Federation of Teachers
The rise of the National Education Association
The political changes of the depression years
The politics of ideological management: the American Legion
Selling the "American way" in schools and on billboards
12. Schools, media, and popular culture: influencing the minds of children and teenagers
Censorship of movies as a form of public education
The production code: movies as educators
Should commercial radio or educators determine national culture?
Creating the superhero for children's radio
Controlling the influence of comic books
Educating children as consumers
The creation of teenage markets
Children and youth from the 1950s to the Twenty-first Century
13. American schools and global politics: the Cold War and poverty
Youth unemployment: universal military service and the GI Bill
The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the Educational Testing Service
The Cold War and purging the schools of communists
American schools: weakest link to global victory?
Global imperatives: the National Defense Education Act
Schools and the War on Poverty
Sesame Street and educational television
14. The fruits of globalization: civil rights, global migration, and multicultural education
Ending school segregation of national minorities
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Native Americans and indigenous educational rights
Asian Americans: educating the "model minority"
Hispanic/Latino Americans
Bilingual education: the Culture Wars continued
The Immigration Act of 1965 and the new American population
Multicultural education and the Culture Wars
Schools and the International women's Movement
Children with special needs
The coloring of Textbook Town
Liberating the Textbook Town housewife for more consumption
Conclusion: the Cold War and civil rights
15. Globalizing the American school: from Nixon to Obama
School prayer and bible reading
The Nixon years: career education and busing
Accountability and standardized testing
Global educational goals: national standards, choice, and savage inequalities
The end of the Common School: choice, privatization, and charter schools
Educating for the consumer economy
Education for global work and consumption
The 2008 election: global economy and cultural divide
Global crisis and the demise of environmental education
Conclusion: from Horace Mann to Barack Obama.
