Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-15T22:03:13.565Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Books by Journalists on American Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Extract

In 1995, Nicholas Lemann wrote an essay for the American Historical Review (AHR) in which he called himself a “non-academic historian” and described the rewards and challenges for that tribe. The Big Test should be scrutinized as the work of an historian, as this Forum does (and as I have done elsewhere, taking issue with his account of the formation of the Educational Testing Service in 1946 and 1947.) Here I will focus on the nonacademic part of Lemann's identity by comparing his work with several dozen books from his profession on American education.

Type
Book Forum
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lemann, NicholasHistory Solo: Non-Academic Historians“ in American Historical Review, June 1995, pp. 788798.Google Scholar

2 Hampel, Robert L.The Origins of the Educational Testing Service“ in Michael Johanek, ed., A Faithful Mirror: Reflections on the College Board and Education in America (New York: The College Entrance Examination Board, 2001).Google Scholar

3 Featherstone, Joseph Schools Where Children Learn (New York: Liveright, 1971); Joseph Featherstone, What Schools Can Do (New York: Liveright, 1976); Benjamin Fine, Our Children Are Cheated (New York: Henry Holt, 1947); Edward B. Fiske, Smart Schools, Smart Kids: Why Do Some Schools Work? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); Fred Hechinger, The Big Red Schoolhouse (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959); Gene I. Maeroff, Don't Blame the Kids: The Trouble with America's Public Schools (New York: McGraw Hill, 1982); Martin Mayer, The Schools (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961); Peter Schrag, Voices in the Classroom: Public Schools and Public Attitudes (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963); Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of American Education (New York: Random House, 1970); Thomas Toch, In the Name of Excellence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). I have not included Jonathan Kozol's many books because I place him in another category—social critic and essayist.Google Scholar

4 Corwin, Miles And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students (New York: William Morrow, 2000); Cameron Crowe, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981); Samuel Freedman, Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students & Their High School (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); Susan Kammeraad-Campbell, Doc: The Story of Dennis Littky and His Fight for a Better School (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989); Tracy Kidder, Among Schoolchildren (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989); John McPhee, The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden of Deerfield (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966); David Owen, High School (New York: Viking Press, 1981); Peter Prescott, A World of our Own: Notes on Life and Learning in a Boys’ Preparatory School (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970); Cristina Rathbone, On the Outside Looking In: A Year at an Inner-City High School (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998); Diana Tittle, Welcome to Heights High: The Crippling Politics of Restructuring America's Public Schools (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

5 Bennahum, David S. Extra Life: Coming of Age in Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1998); H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990); William Finnegan, Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country (New York: Random House, 1998); Thomas French, South of Heaven: Welcome to High School at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York: Doubleday, 1993); Patricia Hersch, A Tribe Apart: A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1998); Jon Katz, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho (New York: Villard, 2000); Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (New York: Doubleday, 1991); Michael Leahy, Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School (New York: Little, Brown, 1988); Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League (New York: Broadway Books, 1998).Google Scholar

6 Maeroff, Gene I. ed., Imaging Education: The Media and Schools in America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998).Google Scholar

7 Schrag, Voices, p. 1.Google Scholar

8 Hersch, Tribe, p. 15, 255.Google Scholar

9 Rosen, Jay What are Journalists For? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 3439.Google Scholar

10 Merritt, Davis “Buzz” Public Journalism and Public Life: Why Telling the Truth Is Not Enough (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998), p. 67; Gerald Grant, “Journalism and Social Science: Continuities and Discontinuities” in Herbert Gans, ed., The Making of Americans (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), pp. 294–295.Google Scholar

11 Featherstone, What Schools Can Do, pp. 160, 144.Google Scholar

12 ibid., p. 13.Google Scholar

13 Featherstone, Schools Where Children Learn, pp. 88, 51.Google Scholar

14 Featherstone, What Schools Can Do, pp. 7, 4.Google Scholar

15 Lemann, History Solo,“ p. 797.Google Scholar

16 ibid. Google Scholar

17 Featherstone, What Schools Can Do, p. 212.Google Scholar