The city was to be “called Babel,” according to the book of Genesis, “because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth.” Although the Midwest of the nineteenth century had never been “of one language, and of one speech” as the ancient city with the tower to heaven, America's heartland was confounded by linguistic diversity, particularly as more and more immigrants poured into the region after the 1830s. Yet, these foreign-language speakers brought with them more than “ax and hoe and rifle,” as Mark Twain once wrote of the “poor immigrant” settlers. They also brought with them a desire to maintain their linguistic and cultural traditions—particularly in the emerging common schools—and the area that spanned along and east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason–Dixon line proved to be an excellent environment for that endeavor. Bilingual education took hold in the Midwestern schools not only because of the enormous amount of foreign-language speakers who settled there—making the region a modern Babel—but also because it was a developing area when the immigrants arrived, thus allowing them to become “co-founders and partners” in the region's affairs.

Although music has long had a place in the school, its position has often been precarious, relegated to odd hours and odd locations, and starved of both funds and attention. While at times music and the arts have enjoyed considerable support, these subjects are often the last ones added and the first ones cut from the curriculum. Yet, the arts have passionate advocates as well, including parents and pedagogues who support a holistic model of education that emphasizes humanistic values and aesthetics as well as utilitarian training. Still, music educators have struggled to justify their subject, often relying on extrinsic arguments to support its inclusion in the curriculum. Music, one is told, helps students raise their reading and math scores, improves their self-discipline, and builds community. Such arguments are rarely persuasive to voters concerned with eliminating expensive “frills” or to officials trying to balance tight budgets and raise test scores. Local newspapers bear witness to this struggle, as music and art programs fight to stay alive in American schools. This story, so potent today, has a long history. It dates back to the nineteenth century and the very birth of school music programs. It crosses continents, having as much currency in Europe as it does in North America. Debates over music in the schools are nothing less than debates over the meaning and purpose of education. Music is not one of the “three ‘R's.” Yet, precisely because of music's peripheral

In November of 1956, the Los Angeles City Board of Education held a regular evening meeting devoted entirely to the topic of school discipline. The session began with brief comments from the district superintendent, Ellis Jarvis, who urged those in attendance not to take the issue too seriously Discipline was “an inherent part of education,” he reminded them, and thus was always “a problem of all schools; all schools in this city, in every city, in every community.” Moreover, he joked, “Denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood.” The rest of the meeting's speakers, however, almost all of whom were Los Angeles teachers, did not share Jarvis’ lighthearted perspective. Representing several local teacher organizations, clubs, and associations, as well as two Board-appointed committees charged with investigating discipline in the city's schools, they portrayed a district in crisis, overrun by misbehaving youth, and urged the Board to take action to address the problem.

“What is our image going to be—conventional educators or innovators, milque-toasts or activists?” In posing this question, federal staff members responsible for developing the National Teacher Corps (NTC), a Great Society teacher reform initiative, articulated both their assumptions about and aspirations for teaching in the 1960s. According to the reformers’ thinking, existing teachers lacked the qualities of innovation, dedication, and social and political engagement required to teach students in America's low-income communities. In response, they called for a new breed of teacher, with attributes and characteristics distinct from those of conventional educators, as well as a new approach to teacher training. The Corps’ strategy for producing this new breed of educator involved recruiting bright, liberal arts graduates to be teaching interns in underserved classrooms and engaging them in an alternative preparation that emphasized familiarizing candidates with their prospective students’ communities and the culture of poverty. In attracting “better” people and devising more effective training for the challenges of teaching in low-income schools, the Corps exploited both the Zeitgeist of the times and a deeply entrenched historical critique of teachers and teacher education, seeking nothing less than the rehabilitation of the teaching profession itself.