The School in the United States: A Documentary History

The School in the United States collects a wide range of essential primary documents of the history of education in the United States, from colonial America to present-day political upheaval. Judiciously assembled by two scholars expert in education history, policy, and economics, this substantively revised new edition incorporates many different sources, from first-person accounts to textbook excerpts and presidential speeches. The history of American education is also a history of national debates and decisions about schooling, and Drs. Fraser and Brewer place the prominent voices of these debates in conversation through carefully curated selections that span famous thinkers like Thomas Jefferson and W. E. B. DuBois as well as ordinary classroom teachers.

Organized by era, each chapter begins with a brief introduction intended to spark student interest and concludes with a detailed bibliography offering opportunities for further research. The book now features an alternative structure that allows readers to engage with the material by topic in addition to, or instead of, chronological order. Other noteworthy updates to this fifth edition include:

• Numerous new documents accompanied by guidance that clearly points students to the most important ideas within.

• A refocused attention on twenty-first-century documents and the experiences of contemporary teachers.

• Increased coverage of diversity issues (race, gender, LGBTQ+ history, and more) and how they’ve been historically addressed in American education.

• An extensively refreshed final two chapters that confront school shootings, debates about charter schools, the impact of COVID-19 on schools, controversial technologies like Artificial Intelligence, and the purposes of public education in the United States.

Comprehensive enough to be read as a main text but selective enough to supplement another, The School in the United States makes accessible key readings in the history of American education in a format that encourages students to make their own evaluations as they engage with major historical debates.

James W. Fraser is Professor Emeritus of History and Education in the Department of Applied Statistics, Social Science, and Humanities at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University, USA. Dr. Fraser was the 2013–2014 President of the History of Education Society.

Dominic J. Brewer is Dean Emeritus and Professor of Education, Economics, and Policy in the Department of Applied Statistics, Social Science, and Humanities at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University, USA. Dr. Brewer is a Past President of the Association for Education Finance and Policy as well as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.