Among School Children (40 page)

Silberman, Charles.
Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of American Education.
Random House, New York, 1970.

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The brief observations and quotations that begin the last section of this book are taken from:

Conant, James Bryant. Introduction to
General Education in a Free Society
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1945). I also perused Conant's
Shaping Educational Policy
(McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964); and Conant's
The Child, the Parent and the State
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1959). Hampel's
Last Little Citadel
contains fascinating revelations about Conant. Oakes's
Keeping Track
describes Conant's contribution to tracking.

Dewey, John.
The School and Society.
Excerpts reprinted in
Dewey on Education: Selections
by Martin Dworkin (Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York, 1959). I also read in Dewey's
Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
(Macmillan, New York, 1916); and Dewey's
The Sources of a Science of Education
(Horace Liveright, New York, 1929). Nearly every educational history I read has something to say about Dewey. Richard Hofstadter's
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
(Knopf, New York, 1963) is especially lucid. About Dewey, I also read:
John Dewey in Perspective
by George R. Geiger (Oxford University Press, New York, 1958);
John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait
by Sidney Hook (John Day, New York, 1939); and
John Dewey, Philosopher of Science and Freedom: A Symposium,
edited by Sidney Hook (Dial Press, New York, 1950).

Du Bois, W. E. B.
The Education of Black People.
Edited by Herbert Aptheker. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1973.

Jefferson, Thomas. Quoted in Butts,
Public Education in the United States.

Mann, Horace. Quoted in Button et al.,
History of Education.
Mann, like Dewey and Jefferson, is discussed in practically every educational history I read.

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The reports from the reform movement of the 1980s are too numerous to cite. One useful analysis of the movement is contained in
Policies for America's Public Schools: Teachers, Equity, and Indicators
by Ron Haskins and Duncan Macrae (Ablex Publishing, Norwood, N.J., 1988).

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I am indebted to Sally Carlton for putting me in touch with Maria Brassard of the University of Massachusetts. I am indebted to Dr. Brassard for the observations I make about abused children in the last section of this book. Dr. Brassard also sent me several papers and put me in touch with Joan M. Featherman, who described her unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Factors Relating to the Quality of Adult Adjustment in Female Victims of Child Sexual Abuse
(University of Massachusetts, 1989). This study, of women who were sexually abused as girls, finds that most of the subjects who recovered best from the horrors of their childhoods remember adults, both from within and outside their families and very often teachers, who took an interest in them and in the process changed their lives. One fine book on the question of why some children recover well from abuse is
The Invulnerable Child,
edited by E. James Anthony and Bertram J. Cohler (Guilford Press, New York, 1987).