This book examines the current debates about the curriculum in historical context and offers considerations for the future.

Shortly after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, Hannah Arendt quipped that "only in America could a crisis in education actually become a factor in politics." The Cold War battle for the American school - dramatized but not initiated by Sputnik - proved Arendt correct. The schools served as a battleground in the ideological conflicts of the 1950s. Beginning with the genealogy of progressive education, and ending with the formation of New Left and New Right thought, Education and the Cold War offers a fresh perspective on the postwar transformation in U.S. political culture by way of an examination of the educational history of that era.

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.

How should universities balance the requirements of teaching with those of scholarship? The consensus that scholarship counts first and teaching comes second has lost its hold, for in an academic world in which few publish (95 percent of publications come from 5 percent of the professors), insisting on the priority of scholarship rings hollow. The American college and university today must assess what difference scholarship makes to teaching and what teaching means to scholarship. Reaffirming Higher Education asks who teaches, what, to whom, and why.The authors maintain that what matters in higher learning is learning, while denying that scholarship detracts from teaching. Chapter 1 discusses who should teach in a university and touches upon such topics as tenure and teaching. Chapter 2 defines what universities should teach, and the mutuality of scholarship, research, and teaching. Chapter 3 answers who should go to college and why. Chapter 4 assesses the future of higher education in the American university and what is at stake on campus. William Scott Green places into perspective the authors' observations and ideals about higher education and what it means to make one's major field of study, the "major," into a primary path to a liberal education.In this intelligent and insightful volume, the authors outline reform and renewal for both' the institutional and personal dimensions of higher learning that would encompass the ideal of the academic ethic. This book should be read by all those who strive to make universities more humane, educators, parents, and students alike.

General education is widely touted as an enduring distinctive of higher education, but what do we actually mean by general education? Differing perspectives not only make it challenging to consider its significance, but also open it up to a wide range of determinations regarding its effectiveness. This volume aims to sharpen understanding of the complex picture of general education by: describing how various conceptions of general education evolved historically, identifying various functions expected of general education in the contemporary context, and pointing out the educational practices that fulfill general education’s aims in the current context. The conceptions of, and aspirations for, general education are consequential. This volume disentangles the divergent conceptions that hinder its renewal and considers the range of avenues for realizing its effectiveness. This is the second issue of the 42nd volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.