ABSTRACT
Schools of Education make easy targets. This is especially true in the United States, where education-school bashing has been a favorite sport for a wide range of participants over a long period of time.1 There are a number of characteristics of this institution that make it vulnerable to attack. Its origins are seen to be lowly (the nineteenth-century normal school, or teacher training college), as is the social standing of its primary clientele (disproportionately drawn from the ranks of women and the working class), and it prepares students for one of the lesser professions. Its curriculum and academic standards are generally considered weak and its faculty and students less able than their counterparts elsewhere in the university.
