Parents and Schools: The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education - Hardcover

Cutler III, William W.

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9780226132167: Parents and Schools: The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226132161 ISBN 13: 9780226132167

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2000

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Who holds ultimate authority for the education of America's children—teachers or parents? Although the relationship between home and school has changed dramatically over the decades, William Cutler's fascinating history argues that it has always been a political one, and his book uncovers for the first time how and why the balance of power has shifted over time. Starting with parental dominance in the mid-nineteenth century, Cutler chronicles how schools' growing bureaucratization and professionalization allowed educators to gain increasing control over the schooling and lives of the children they taught. Central to his story is the role of parent-teacher associations, which helped transform an adversarial relationship into a collaborative one. Yet parents have also been controlled by educators through PTAs, leading to the perception that they are "company unions."

Cutler shows how in the 1920s and 1930s schools expanded their responsibility for children's well-being outside the classroom. These efforts sowed the seeds for later conflict as schools came to be held accountable for solving society's problems. Finally, he brings the reader into recent decades, in which a breakdown of trust, racial tension, and "parents' rights" have taken the story full circle, with parents and schools once again at odds.

Cutler's book is an invaluable guide to understanding how parent-teacher cooperation, which is essential for our children's educational success, might be achieved.

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About the Author:

William W. Cutler III is professor of history emeritus at Temple University. His research focuses on the relationship between education and American culture.

From Publishers Weekly:

Historian and school director Cutler has examined PTA minutes and local publications from the mid-19th century to the present to write an intimate history of the ambiguous and symbiotic relationship between home and school. This is in many ways a story about gender and classAand, eventually, race. "Schools often had to fight the perception that they taught children to disrespect their families," but often educators and reformers "agreed that many parents could no more be trusted with their children's health than with their education." Immigrant and working-class parents in particular have been distrusted: Cutler shows how some social workers have been unapologetic in "wanting the school to reform the family." After WW II, the schools tried to build trust and communication with the home and, Cutler argues, "paid a high price for not living up to expectations." The reciprocity between home and school broke down as the larger society went through upheavals, and the PTA came to be seen as part of the failing system. (Although Cutler points out that "fathers' clubs were not at all uncommon in the early history of home and school associations," the principal work of the PTA has always been carried out by mothers: "men were often made to feel unwelcome.") With the "demise of the intimate social networks that used to bind the home to the school," strife and strikes increased through the 1970s. Now, Cutler warns, parents and teachers must "become more realistic about what can be reasonably expected from their cooperation" to avoid repeating a "cycle of failure." (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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