ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what we do in fact want and expect of our schools from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. The data tended to support that in the 1970s parents were highly dissatisfied with their children's schools and held narrow, more limited educational expectations for schools than had prevailed in the past. Four broad areas of goals for the schools have emerged. They are academic, vocational, social and civic, and personal. Three kinds of learnings proceeded in the classroom. There were the academics, steadily expanding. Simultaneously, there were moral learnings, including the work ethic, ratified by home and church and embedded in the school's custodial role. Then there was the social and personal learning to be derived from expectations for individual performance in the group settings of classrooms. The mandate to schools has not been made clear. The schools suffer from lack of a clearly articulated mandate and so are peculiarly susceptible to fads and fashions.
