Urban, Wayne J. and Wagoner Jr., Jennings L. (2009). American Education: A History (4th ed.). Reviewed by Jeffrey Aaron Snyder, New York University

Urban, Wayne J. and Wagoner Jr., Jennings L. (2009). American Education: A History (4th ed.). NY: Routledge Pp. xxiii + 468         ISBN 978-0-415-96529-3 Reviewed by Jeffrey Aaron Snyder New York University September 9, 2009 Now in its fourth edition, American Education: A History is the best general history of American education in print today. With twelve chapters containing material ranging from Native American education in precolonial America to the advent of No Child Left Behind at the turn of the twenty-first-century, Urban and Wagoner’s textbook presents a comprehensive survey of American educational history that is unparalleled. All of the important trends in the history of education are here, from the Common Schools Movement and the feminization of teaching to the rise of urban school systems and battles over school desegregation. The same goes for significant events such as the publication of the first McGuffey Readers in 1836, key organizations such as the National Education Association and uniquely influential figures including the likes of Horace Mann, John Dewey and Booker T. Washington. With respect to its layout and organization, American Education is a well-designed text. Chapter titles in the Table of Contents are followed by informative headings and sub-headings. Each chapter opens with an overview of the historical context regarding the particular period in question, which is a valuable feature, especially for those students who may not have taken an American history class since high school. Each chapter also contains an exceptionally useful “Further Reading” bibliographical section, listing relevant books along with succinct one-sentence summaries. Overall, the authors do an excellent job of highlighting the pertinent scholarship, which typically includes a mix of classic monographs and more recent publications. Arguably the most noteworthy aspect of American History is its focus on regional variation. Throughout the text, Urban and Wagoner demonstrate that educational traditions, institutions and opportunities varied in important and systematic ways from region to region. The second chapter (“Colonization and Cultural Transplantation, 1607-1776”) is particularly strong in this regard and builds off of the recent historiography that has challenged the New England-centric story of colonial America, or what the authors refer to as the “Massachusetts myopia” syndrome (16). While the effort to move beyond a Puritan New England story is a welcome departure from previous accounts of education in colonial America, the authors’ depiction of hidebound religious education in New England sometimes verges on caricature. The authors assert, for example, that educational traditions in New England “can be best appreciated as a series of reactionary efforts aimed at fostering and preserving a rigidly homogeneous or ‘tribal’ way of life” (p. 16). With the exception of a few similarly exaggerated claims, however, Urban and Wagoner present a detailed and illuminating portrait of colonial education, emphasizing the diversity of the “educational landscape” across the “peaks and valleys” of the Southern, Middle and New England colonies (p. 63). The authors add the analytic variables of race and class to that of region in one of the book’s strongest chapters (chapter five: “Class, Caste and Education in the South, 1800-1900”). This chapter provides a superb overview of education for blacks in the South during the nineteenth-century, with thorough assessments of the antebellum era, Reconstruction and beyond. With respect to Reconstruction, the authors cover the full sweep of educational initiatives, including incisivepresentations of the Freedmen’s Bureau schools, Yankee “Schoolmarms” and African American self-help efforts. “[L]iteracy and formal education,” Urban and Wagoner show, “were essential ingredients of true liberation” for the Freedmen and Freedwomen in the wake of the Civil War (164). Chapter five concludes with an analysis of the famous Washington-Du Bois controversy at the turn of the twentieth-century and an endorsement of historian James Anderson’s claim that there have been two types of citizenship education in the United States—one for democratic citizenship and another, experienced overwhelmingly by African Americans, for second-class citizenship. Many students, not to mention instructors, approach the history of education with a particular interest in progressive education. It is regrettable, therefore, that chapter seven (“Organizing the Modern School System: Educational Reform in the Progressive Era, 1890-1915”) is diminished by some awkward terminology. Several generations of historians have struggled to come up with adequate definitions of progressivism and progressive education. One even went so far as to say that “progressivism as an ideology is nowhere to be found” (Rodgers, p. 127). Urban and Wagoner reject this claim. In a section called “Defining Progressivism,” the authors divide progressives into “liberal progressives,” who “sought social justice by casting off restrictions of one kind or another,” and “conservative progressives,” who “sought social order through rational management by trained experts” (p. 227). This division is neither accurate nor helpful. In addition to being frustratingly vague, it introduces a false dichotomy. John Dewey, for instance, who the authors refer to as the “archetype of the liberal progressive reformer,” was in favor of labor unions, consumer safety standards and child labor laws, all of which sought social justice by creating and enforcing restrictions “of one kind or another” (pp. 253-4). Much more helpful than this sorting of progressives into liberal and conservative camps is historian David Tyack’s more fine-grained distinction between “administrative progressives” and “pedagogical progressives,” which the authors cite and use to good effect. While the former emphasized organizational efficiency and the empowerment of a “new class of professionally trained administrators,” the latter favored “more child-centered teaching and more democratic relations between teachers and administrators” (p. 228). Finally, for such a well-researched topic as progressive education, the “Further Reading” section of this chapter is wanting. Notably absent are Ellen Condliffe Lagemann’s An Elusive Science (2000) and David Labaree’s The Trouble with Ed Schools (2004), both of which include perceptive treatments of progressive education. As debates about NCLB have figured prominently in professional educational circles in recent years, readers will no doubt be interested in Urban and Wagoner’s last chapter (chapter 12: “From Equality to Excellence: American Education, 1980-2008”). In this chapter, the authors argue that there has been more continuity than change in federal education policy since 1980, especially with respect to a focus on standards and standardized testing. The authors take a dim view of NCLB, calling it a “bureaucratic behemoth that threatens to remake schools into testing factories that, at best, address only a very limited portion of a complex educational and social reality” (p. 445). While devoting several pages to cultural literacy (à la E.D. Hirsch), this chapter only includes a brief four-paragraph section on multiculturalism and multicultural education. The authors portray multicultural education as a rarefied movement, largely confined to colleges and universities, neglecting to note that many different varieties of multiculturalism have been promoted over the last several decades. Moreover, Urban and Wagoner fail to connect multiculturalism to larger historical trends such as the Culture Wars and they grossly underestimate the extent to which multiculturalism has penetrated all levels of the educational arena. In the Preface, the authors announce that the text of American Education is animated by the following basic question: “what is the point of studying the history of American education?” (p. xix). The authors do not explicitly return to this question until the last paragraph of the Epilogue in which they assert that “attention to complexity” provides a compelling answer. “We hope,” the authors write, “that our textbook addresses many of the most enduring complexities underlying our educational system and provides perspective for those who seek to understand and improve upon what history has wrought” (p. 448). This notion of a “usable history” that can help inform serious discussions of current educational policy is clearly an important justification for studying the history of education. Nonetheless, this reviewer wishes that the authors had included a short introduction that makes this case in more precise and convincing terms. Such an introduction would outline some of the key themes in the history of education and show how an historical perspective can further our understanding of contemporary issues. How, for instance, does the perennial tension between local and centralized control shed light on NCLB? Or, what does the historical variation in educational aims and opportunities along the lines of race and class tell us about the achievement gap? By addressing specific questions in this vein, the authors would demonstrate that history can indeed illuminate the “enduring complexities” of the present. References Labaree, David. (2004). TheTrouble with Ed Schools. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. (2000). An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rodgers, David. (1982). “In Search of Progressivism.” Reviews in American History 10 (4), 113-32. About the Reviewer Jeffrey Aaron Snyder is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Education program at New York University. Jeffrey studies modern American history with an emphasis on higher education, multicultural education and intellectual history. His dissertation, tentatively entitled “Race, Nation and Education: Black History during Jim Crow,” is a cultural and intellectual history of the early black history movement. He can be contacted at jeffrey.snyder@nyu.edu.