ABSTRACT
In few periods prior to the past two decades have historians of American education enjoyed their quarrels more or taken them more seriously. Revisionists tend to view the educational past differently. First, they see it as encompassing more than schools. Second, when they focus on schools, they provide more critical accounts of institutional openness and the school's record in promoting educational opportunity. They present evidence suggesting that schools have exhibited a greater concern with moral training than education and that the goals of those who have controlled schools have been ambivalent at best relative to the education of minorities and working-class people. Over the past two decades, the History of Educational Quarterly has grown in stature as a quality research journal. David Tyack illustrates the relation between American education and public policy in The One Best System. He also illustrates intentionally the relation of public policy and history, a relatively new but widely shared emphasis among historians of education.
