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Land of Fair Promise Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Schools, 1885-1941
$18.88
Book
Land of Fair Promise
Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Schools, 1885-1941
Judith Rosenberg Raftery
This book uses a case study of education and educational reform in Los Angeles as a lens for viewing a wide range of political and cultural questions involved in urban development in the American West, notable the manner and motives of those who changes school policy.
Rapid population growth after 1885 and the recognition that large numbers of school children were either non-white or non-English-speaking compelled Western Progressives to reestablish order and end corrupt schoolboard practices. Drawing on the ideas of Jane Addams and John Dewey, reformers made the Los Angeles school system an instance of apparently effective reform, not only in educational terms, but also administratively and in the broad range of social services provided under school direction -- penny-lunch programs, after-hour playgrounds, day-care centers, adult classes, and home classes for shut-in mothers. But these achievements bore increasingly equivocal results as industrialization, immigration, and urbanization contributed to immense social and economic problems, and reformers intensified programs to Americanize immigrant children. More complicated and divisive progressive politics vied increasingly with professionalization and grassroots pressure from immigrant groups to determine education policy.
Many of the leading Los Angeles reformers were women, newly empowered by suffrage, who expanded their campaigns for social change. Also, since women composed most of the teaching force, they began to see themselves as professional educators. But professionalization proved to be a double-edged sword. Better trained than their predecessors, women nevertheless had to fight to hold on to their status as the school system became more efficient, more structured, and more impersonal. Professionalization also led to clashes between professionals; psychologists introduced IQ measurement, and many classroom teachers found mental testing unreliable and sought alternate methods to evaluate the abilities of children.
Reformers, educators, and ethnic organizations worked assiduously to modify the social behavior of the now-diverse school population. Despite differences, these groups together built a new social fabric, a patchwork shaped by the unrelenting realities of twentieth-century America. the book is illustrated with 14 photographs.
Judith Rosenberg Raftery is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Chico.
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the following original edition:
Title Land of fair promise: politics and reform in Los Angeles schools, 1885-1941
Author Judith Rosenberg Raftery
Edition illustrated
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1992
ISBN 0804719306, 9780804719308
Length 284 pages
Find more reproduction works from Stanford University Press at QOOP.com
Economy in Education
$12.61
Book
We owe so much to our public schools and so readily take them for granted that we may fail to recognize how careful we should be in any projected program of economy in education. The people of our nation have gone through an economic crisis of great severity and have in spite of it retained good health, good order, and stability. This is evidence of an informed public. For this we may certainly credit our public school system more than any other factor. The American school has brought about in each community a mutual understanding which has permitted unusual co-operation in these times of difficulty. Before we change any essential element in our public school system, then we must be sure that we are not damaging it, for it provides the best guaranty of continued national life that we have.
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the following original edition:
Economy in education
William John Cooper
Stanford university press, 1933
Original from the University of Michigan
82 pages
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