K-12

Revisionists:

·   Historically, Americans have placed enormous expectations on what public schools can accomplish (Cremin, 1972; Perkinson, 1968)

·     Schools have been designed to reproduced the existing social order (Bowles and Gintis, 1976; Karier, 1975; Spring, 1976)

·     Public schools were created to assimilate and Americanized and thus discriminated against immigrants and minorities. (Greer, 1972; Kaestle, 1973; Tyack, 1974)

·     Public high schools were established for the benefit for the middle and upper classes (Katz, 1968)

·     The bureaucratic organization of schooling was designed to inhibit working class achievement (Katz, 1971, Tyack, 1974)

·     Vocational education was created as a device to curb working class and immigrant aspirations (Lazerson, 1971; 1974)

·     Urban public school systems were organized in the image of “one best system” which denied the legitimacy of public participation in educational decision-making, undermined teacher professionalism, and rejected the validity of ethnic and racial cultural values.