In this update to his landmark publication, William J. Reese offers a comprehensive examination of the trends, theories, and practices that have shaped America’s public schools over the last two centuries. Reese approaches this subject along two main lines of inquiry—education as a means for reforming society and ongoing reform within the schools themselves. He explores the roots of contemporary educational policies and places modern battles over curriculum, pedagogy, race relations, and academic standards in historical perspective. A thoroughly revised epilogue outlines the significant challenges to public school education within the last five years. Reese analyzes the shortcomings of “No Child Left Behind” and the continued disjuncture between actual school performance and the expectations of government officials. He discusses the intrusive role of corporations, economic models for enticing better teacher performance, the continued impact of conservatism, and the growth of home schooling and charter schools. Informed by a breadth of historical scholarship and based squarely on primary sources, this volume remains the standard text for future teachers and scholars of education.

For most of us, school was our first detailed experience of a building outside the homes of our parents, friends and relations. Many people react emotionally when their old school, charged with so many memories, is closed or demolished. Not all school buildings are worthy of designation, but many are major local landmarks and demonstrate an important part of our society's evolution. This book aims to raise awareness of the wide range of school buildings built in England from the Reformation to the Millennium, and discusses which buildings may be worthy of greater appreciation and preservation. It summarises the development of schools and analyses how social attitudes have been expressed in their architecture and planning. Finally, it looks at the adaptation of older schools to modern needs and new uses for schools around the country, drawing on examples of best practice from Historic Building Inspectors and Advisers.

The first of these works was intended to teach spelling and reading while pointing out the "evils" of Catholicism; the second was a combination religious instructor and reader used by children of early New England.

The lineage of American schoolbooks, like that of our educational system, goes back to Europe and, particularly, to England. The first schoolbooks used in the United States were printed in England and for two hundred years a great influx of books came from sources outside this country. However, with the break from England and the emergence of the United States as a nation, text book publishing came into being in America. This book presents a general portrayal of American textbooks, and along with this, as a requisite accompaniment, a picture of the pioneer-day school system insofar as it had to do with production and early usage of schoolbooks. The author shows how the first textbooks came to be, tells of textbook writers, and traces through the bulk of the material presented the changes that most of the textbook authors brought about. The types of books discussed include the New England primers as well as other types of primers; readers, specially the McGuffey readers; rhetoric and foreign language books; arithmetics; spelling books; literature texts; elocution texts; handwriting and copy books; histories; and many other books that made our school systems what they are today. Besides being a study of the textbook field in America, History of American Schoolbooks is also a history of the United States as reflected in the type of teaching and instructional aids used to educate Americans. A study of this subject is by no means just an interesting side trip into America's past. Many of the books are still influential, and many of the old methods are staging a come­back in the educational field, History of American Schoolbooks should be of interest to educators and historians, as well as teachers, librarians, book collectors, publishers, and general readers who are interested in the evolution and growth of a segment of education and educational publishing that is one of the most important and vital in our country.