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Review: Can Historians Help School Reformers?
Reviewed Work(s): The Failed Promise of the American High School 1890-1995 by David L.
Angus and Jeffrey E. Mirel; Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of
Character from Colonial Times to the Present by B. Edward McClellan; Schooled to Work:
Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876-1946 by Herbert M. Kliebard
Review by: Larry Cuban
Source: Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 453-467
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Book Reviews
Can Historians Help School Reformers?

An essay review of The Failed Promise of the American High School 1890-1995
by David L. Angus and Jeffrey E. Mirel, New York: Teachers College Press,
1999, Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of Character from
Colonial Times to the Present by B. Edward McClellan, New York: Teachers
College Press, 1999, and Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American
Curriculum, 1876-1946 by Herbert M. Kliebard, New York: Teachers Col-
lege Press, 1999.
Reviewed by:
LARRY CUBAN
Stanford University
Stanford, California
In the build-up for the Gulf War in 1991, President George Bush and
advocates for military intervention compared Saddam Hussein to Adolph
Hitler. But congressional opponents compared sending troops to Kuwait to
U.S. involvement in Vietnam a quarter-century earlier. Policymakers have
often dipped into the past for different analogies on the same situation to
support their policy position. Many historians, however, wince at such anal-
ogies. "It's downright embarrassing to a historian," writes Otis Graham, a
professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, "to have
to watch policy makers flail around in bad history lessons." But are there
"good" history lessons (Scott, 1993)?
Historians are divided over what, if anything, can be learned from his-
tory. When policymakers (and public school students, I should add) ask
about the usefulness of history they want guidance from the past to avoid
making mistakes in the present; some even want predictions for future
courses of action. That policymakers deem history of some use can be seen
in the growing cadre of public historians hired by federal and state agen
cies to manage archives, write institutional histories, and provide insight
from the past to decisionmakers. Diplomats negotiating treaties and legis-
lators ratifying those agreements call for elaborated histories of the na
tions' prior relationships. Judicial decisions depend not only on precedent
but often contain the history of the specific circumstances being litigated.1
? 2001 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Curriculum Inquiry 31:4 (2001)
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road,
Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.
454 LARRY CUBAN
Historians who believe that the past can indeed inform policy seek to be
engaged in contemporary events. They wish to bridge the academy and the
real world. They argue that even if "lessons" cannot be extracted from the
past, policymakers can surely profit from scholarly inquiry into the past
and the methods historians have used.
Richard Neustadt, a professor of public administration, and historian

Ernest May have taught a course called "The Uses of History" since the
mid-1970s in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Their book
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers explicitly uses cases
from the 1950s through the 1980s to help "those who try to govern" and
"the uses they make of history ... and how they might do better for them-
selves in their own terms." Two historians of education who would largely
agree with this point of view argue that for educational reformers, the past
can be instructive: "Just as it would be foolish and self-defeating to enter
military combat without a plan and without knowledge of the terrain and
of one's allies and adversaries, so reformers dare not venture forth without
considering the sources of their ideas and the experiences of the past."
But, of course, most policy-driven reformers in education or other arenas
take the dare and venture forth daily without a look backward to historians
(Neustadt & May 1986, p. xxii; Ravitch & Vinovskis, 1995, p. ix).
In short, a strong argument can be made that scholars using a wide
range of archival and other sources can aid contemporary policymakers in
pointing out similarities and differences between previous and current
situations. Moreover, the historical method of constructing a chronological
narrative can be immensely helpful to policymakers pressed for quick so-
lutions to ambiguously defined problems. Historians can document alter-
native solutions to a current problem that also existed decades or even
centuries earlier. Or, of even more help to policymakers, historians can
redefine current problems and solutions by observing how similar situa-
tions were viewed by a previous generation. Finally, without stooping to
offer "lessons," historians can warn policymakers of what did not work,
what might be preferable, and what to avoid under certain conditions.
No matter how strong an argument advocates of a useful past can make,
many historians still reject the notion that history can, or should, serve the
present. These historians point to their obligation as professionals to be
disinterested in what policies their inquiries support or challenge. Scholars
must bring to bear their knowledge of the past and their craft in handling
documents without paying attention to the present moment. Not to do so
can corrupt their professional impartiality. Moreover, these historians point
to the unique events and details of a situation in the past-U.S. involve-
ment in Vietnam-that are seldom identical or even sufficiently similar to
allow policymakers to compare with current explosive situations in the
Middle East, central Africa, or the former Yugoslavia. More specifically,
there are contemporary situations for which no historical analogy can be
drawn: To what can the collapse of Soviet communism be compared? Or
global warming? Or the startling rise in rates of dissolved marriages in
developed nations?
CAN HISTORIANS HELP SCHOOL REFORMERS? 455
Historians bothered about reading the present into the past also ar-
gue that policy-relevant colleagues ask questions about the past that
too tightly tethered to contemporary issues and heavily influenced b
the scholars' values and experiences. Some present-oriented historians
for example, ask: Why do public schools fail to improve student achiev
ment? They then search the past for answers to a question that f
practitioners, parents, or policymakers ever asked in 1880, 1920, or 19
They often discover a "golden age" when most students were academ
achievers and teachers were qualified and taught well. They offer th
"golden" years as a model to inspire reformers. For those histori
uninterested in connecting the past to current policy issues, prese
oriented scholars who seek to influence reformers are, in their opin
presentists, researchers who read the present into the past, find "gold
ages" and, in doing so, distort history to fit contemporary situation
Because of all these shortcomings in being presentists, historians sho
write history for history's sake.2
In all honesty, at times I lean toward those who claim that scholars m
disengage from contemporary policy issues when investigating the p
because history seldom teaches explicit lessons to policymakers (even
they were attentive and willing to learn, which are separate issues bey
the scope of this review). Still, more often than not, I find myself in
camp of policy-relevant historians. As a practitioner and policymaker f
quarter-century before becoming a professor, my values and experien
shaped the questions that I have asked over the last two decades-many
these questions connect policy to practice and have shaped the lines o
historical inquiry I pursued.
The path I have chosen, however, has been troublesome. The tug
reading the present into the past is strong and unyielding even when
scrutinize high school yearbooks from 1910 in the dank basement of
district office. Resisting the temptation to select only those historical reco
and incidents that fit the contemporary scene or bolster an emergin
interpretation is a constant struggle. I have to constantly remind myself t
take the past on its own terms, to welcome the anomalous record tha
challenges other archival sources, or to spend more time investigating
event that undermines thoroughly what I had found. Juggling professi
duties to the craft and discipline with insistent impulses to shape stor
and analyses that fit particular contemporary policies consistent with
values is-in a trite phrase-hard work.
None of this would surprise those of my colleagues who are dee
committed to both scholarship and improving schools. It is unsurpris
because the public school is a core social institution in a democratic soci
that has had a checkered history of being drafted again and again to up
the lives of individual students and improve a society blessed by prospe
and freedom yet wracked by social ills and inequities. Historians of ed
tion, perhaps more so than other historians, particularly if their formativ
experiences included working in schools, have had to contend with hew
to scholarly obligations while participating in reform movements. Polit
456 LARRY CUBAN
struggles over conflicting institutional goals that included both scholars

and practitioners have been documented repeatedly in the last century and
a half of public schools.3
With all of these institutional and individual tensions to reconcile as a
scholar and practitioner, I find myself among those colleagues who bring
historical methodology and knowledge of the past to inform current policy
debates on directions for school reform.
As I have noted, historians of education include those who plumb ar-

chives pursuing questions that engage them with little concern for whether
or not the questions interest policymakers. The compelling public issues of
the day have little interest for them as they discharge their scholarly duties.
There are also presentists-historians who have strong policy preferences
for solving a compelling public problem. They ask questions anchored in
the present and create historical accounts that permit those preferences
for particular reforms to emerge. And between the two groups are yet even
other historians of education who see historical methods as useful tools for
policy analysis and redefining a current problem by examining previous

generations of reformers struggling with similar but not identical situations
and the alternatives that these earlier reformers generated. Those histor-
ians share David Tyack's conclusion that contemporary decisionmakers
already have a picture in their minds of what the past was like and, accurate
or not, will formulate policy based in those blurred images of the past.
These historians believe that more accurate renderings of the past than
currently exist can inform the present not by prescribing particular policies
but in helping educational decisionmakers, again in Tyack's words, "not
only to use a sense of the past (which they do willy-nilly) but also to make sense
of it" (italics in original quote) (Tyack, 1979, p. 56).
These varied historians of education can be arrayed along a continuum.4
The three books under review, part of a series published by Teachers
College Press, span the entire continuum. Series' editors William Reese
and Barbara Finkelstein, in their forewords to the McClellan and Kliebard
books (there is no editors' foreword for the Angus and Mirel book), clearly
favor history as being policy-sensitive but not presentist. Reese asserts that
"history cannot offer prescriptions for the ills of the present." He asserts
/ / /
NON-POLICY
PRESENTISTS POLICY-SENSITIVE HISTORIANS
HISTORIANS HISTORIANS
Ask questions anchored in Ask questions anchored in Ask questions

the present; seek lessons the present; render an present- render an
for policy makers; give account of the past that accunt past with
policy recommendations raises questions about little concern for current
current policy without policy.
offering
prescriptions
FIGURE 1. Continuum of Historians
that the aim of the series is to place "a subject of immediate, pressing publ
concern in an impressively broad framework" (McClellan, p. viii). The
itors avoided historians who "yearn for a purer, better, usually imaginary pa
a golden age where virtue once reigned" (p. viii). To the editors, "hist
remains the one best way to see the dilemmas of the present in their broad
est perspective, reminding us that some difficulties and challenges are uniq
to our time, while others are timeless" (p. viii). Editors Reese and Fink
stein are policy-sensitive historians of education; they would be allergi
offering prescriptions for reformers to follow. The Kliebard and McCle
histories match the aims of the series well, whereas historians Angus and Mi
are presentists who may have given the editors sneezing fits.
I now offer a brief summary of each volume before moving to a final se
tion on what help, if any, historians can offer contemporary school reforme
MORAL EDUCATION IN AMERICA
In 106 pages of text, Edward McClellan traces the history of moral e

tion in elementary and secondary schools-with brief attention to h
education-from 1607 until the 1990s. McClellan made two crucial deci-
sions in framing his compact history. First, he concentrates on the formal
curriculum that provided moral instruction in schools, not the informal or
hidden curriculum buried in the organization, rules, culture, and model-
ing of behavior that also shapes children's moral attitudes and behaviors in
school (Dreeben, 1973; Jackson, 1968; Hansen, 1995). Thus, the explicit
curriculum used to teach moral codes form the core of the book. This is,
in short, a history of character education in public school curriculum.
Second, McClellan focuses on reformers' ideas of moral education that
became embedded in the school curriculum. The book, then, is a three-
century intellectual history of various ideological cross-currents that swept
through policy debates of what to do about the declining moral character
of children. Although McClellan uses the phrase "moral instruction" often
there is virtually nothing in the book about what occurs in classrooms over
the three centuries. In fact, McClellan asks whether moral education "has
made a difference in the behavior of the young"(p. 105).
In reading Moral Education I was struck by the broad range of sources
and subjects that McClellan mobilizes to underscore the importance of an
individualistic-driven character education in American schools. He shows
concisely how Protestant Christian values permeated 19th century public

schools while the Sunday School movement made room for the fierce de-
nominationalism that so characterized American Protestantism, but not for
the Catholic minority in mid-19th century America. Increasing friction with
the Catholic hierarchy over the public schools' embrace of Protestant values
in textbooks and reading the King James version of the Bible without com-
ment eventually led to the creation of a separate parochial system of schools.
McClellan succinctly documents the major reforms that swept across
American schools at the beginning of the 20th century and the emergence
458 LARRY CUBAN
of a progressive view of moral education that countered the pervasive

individualism embedded in traditional character education. Progressives
saw moral education as a process of individual and, more importantly,
social improvement. Moral instruction leading to collective efforts to im-
prove society could permeate all subjects as a way of thinking about social
justice rather than the inculcation of particular virtues in individual children.
The ebb and flow of moral education and the tensions between tradi-
tional and progressive views of how best to develop children's moral char-
acter in public schools continued into the late 20th century. McClellan
gives brief attention to values clarification, cognitive development, feminist-
driven notions of caring, and a strong resurgence of formal character
education programs. McClellan concludes that even with vigorous contem-
porary attention to character instruction, moral education "has yet to re-
gain the place it had in the schools before the Second World War" (p. 106).
And where does McClellan stand on current programs of moral education?
Although this work seeks to inform contemporary discussion of moral education, it

does not take a position in the debates. The question of what choices we ought to
make is a matter best left to philosophers, theologians, and others whose task it is
to define the good life and find ways to bring it into being. History serves this
process best not by providing its own answers but rather by offering perspective and
suggesting a rough sense of limits and possibilities. (p. xii)
McClellan avoids judging the worth of different moral education pro-

grams or their ultimate impact on children or the larger society. Because
he chose not to plumb the effects of the hidden curriculum on children's
moral development or determine to what degree, if at all, school and
classroom life shaped character, he was probably wise in saying nothing
about the impact of these programs. These decisions, however, seriously
limited the reach and potential impact of the book on a wide-ranging
audience of specialists and nonspecialists. McClellan is in the company of
scholars who find contemporary policy issues-moral education in schools-
worthwhile launching pads for historical inquiries, but he conquers the
temptation to pass judgment on the worth of moral education as a goal,
much less draw lessons for present day reformers.
McClellan offers readers a broad historical perspective on the longevity
of contending traditions of moral education within the formal curriculum
and the enduring goal, endorsed by public opinion, that tax-supported
schools improve the moral character of the next generation. There have
been and are other goals for public schooling, such as preparing the young
for work, that also have a history.
SCHOOLED TO WORK
Herbert Kliebard's Schooled to Work, builds on his earlier intellectu

of public school curriculum (Kliebard, 1986). He concentrat
reformers in the late 19th century, in Reese's foreword to the book
Americans to think about their schools in new ways that made the lin
between education and jobs explicit" (p. xi).
Between the end of the Civil War and World War II, Kliebard documen
how training boys and girls for work triumphed as an educational ideal f
public schools. For most of the 19th century, schooling for literacy, mo
character, and citizenship to prepare young children to be full-fledge
adult members of the community and discharge their moral and civic
duties had been the public schools' primary tasks. For those who wanted
go on to college or enter business, there were college preparatory and
commercial curricula. Beginning in the last quarter-century of the 19
century, however, with the introduction of manual arts, later vocation
education, and, finally, the conversion of the academic curriculum int
preparation for work, did reformers succeed in converting the entire cu
riculum to preparing students to get and hold jobs in a fast-changi
workplace. Thus, the title of the book.
Kliebard traces each of these three stages as they unfolded nationall
and locally. Manual arts, a pedagogical reform in the 1880s, aimed
loosening the stranglehold of academics and rigid teacher-centered pe
agogy on classroom instruction. Students who worked with their hand
drawing, cooking, and crafting wood and metal objects that were both
aesthetic and useful-would, reformers believed, resurrect the declinin
work ethic and make clear to educators and the public that actively lear
ing through doing was far better than sitting, listening, and reading.
International economic competition with Britain and Germany, how
ever, produced business-led coalitions of reformers who wanted schools
prepare skilled workers for expanding industries. Kliebard recounts how vo-
cational educational reformers swallowed up the manual arts movement a
concentrated on skill training for the workplace. Two chapters on man
arts and vocational programs in Milwaukee schools nicely locate nation
trends in one city and how manual arts gave way to vocational training.
By 1917, with the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act, the reform coalition
had secured the first federal law that gave money to states for vocatio
training. Reformers had planted the idea that not only were public scho
now responsible for preparing all students for the workplace, they al
promised that preparation for the workplace would lead to good jobs f
individuals, including historically oppressed poor and minority youth, a
economic prosperity for the nation. Kliebard then traces how vocationa
ism as an ideal becomes ascendant nationally, first in the 1920s, and the
after the crises of the Great Depression and World War II when New De
programs (e.g., the Civilian Conservation Corps, National Youth Admini
tration) had seriously challenged the grip that vocational educators had o
school programs. By 1946, with the demise of these New Deal agencies
vocational educators were stronger than ever and the ideal of vocation
ism in public schools, Kliebard argues, had triumphed.
The victory, Kliebard claims, is more symbolic than real. The record
high school graduates getting jobs in occupations for which they prepar
is flimsy. Ditto for the record of minority and poor youth enrolled i
460 LARRY CUBAN
vocational education climbing aboard the escalator of social mobility. As

for the claims of reformers that vocationalizing the curriculum will lead to
national economic prosperity, no documentation exists.
Although acknowledging the strengths of the vocational movement in
challenging traditional teaching practices, expanding the curriculum for
those students who had little passion (or money) to continue their educa-
tion, and loosening the grip of academic traditionalists on the purposes of
schooling, Kliebard hardly celebrates the victory of vocationalism. Kliebard
minces no word about the "cramped social vision" (p. 228) of these suc-
cessful reformers. "The fragile presence," he says, "that intellectual virtues
maintain in the American curriculum has correspondingly become eroded"
(p. 231).
In a passionate conclusion to the book, Kliebard elaborates John Dew-
ey's critique of vocational education. The victory of vocationalism in the
curriculum meant that other civic and moral purposes for compelling
children to attend school and requiring everyone to pay taxes to support
the institution whether or not they had children attending were subordi-
nated to preparing students to be workers.
If vocational education is to build on its symbolic success and help redress the
injustices inflicted on a neglected segment of the school population as well as
revivifying education for all, it will not be by concentrating obsessively on rewards
to be reaped at some indeterminate point in the future, or by isolating itself from
the rest of education, and certainly not by converting the entire educational system
to the narrow end of economic gain, as important as that may be. It can succeed
only by extending its reach beyond the promise of distant economic benefits.
(p. 235)
Making schools into moral communities where a rich civic life was prac-
ticed and both mind-work and hand-work were honored-goals that Dewey
(and Kliebard) prized-would have to be embraced by vocational educators.
Unlike McClellan and those historians who are less interested in con-
temporary policies, Kliebard (who departs in this regard from his earlier
history of curriculum policy) makes judgments and speaks to any policy-
maker who picks up Schooled to Work. The views that Kliebard offers poli-
cymakers are ones that they may well spurn. Reformers' success in making
vocational education mainstream and the ideal of vocationalism as a goal
of public schools, even when the promise of good jobs for graduates and
national economic prosperity lacks evidence to justify the claim, leads
Kliebard to conclude that the victory of the "vocational imperative" (p. 231)
was symbolic.
Kliebard sees
policy statements as expressions of regard and messages of status.... Perhaps more

than anything, a curricular policy is a signal not just of respect for the interests of
one group but of the dominance of one group over the other.... Symbolically
speaking, whether vocational education is actually instrumental in getting youth
ready for the workplace is really besides the point. (pp. 229-30)
As a longtime admirer of Kliebard's intellectual histories of curriculu

I found this volume, as are his other works, coherently argued with am
support and well-crafted prose. In his last chapter he speaks directly a
passionately to readers, including policymakers, about the limited ga
and substantial losses for America's children and society in the victory
vocationalism. Yet in delivering judgments passionately Kliebard reveals
commitment to the discipline of history and its craft. The story he tells, t
analysis he spreads before the reader, contains no heroes or villains,
even a golden age. That is not the case with the David Angus and Jeff
Mirel volume.
THE FAIIED PROMISE OF THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL,

1890-1995
Angus and Mirel waste no time in telling readers why they wrote their
history of the American high school and for whom. In the first paragraph
of the "Acknowledgments" they position their work in the "lively national
debate" of the late 1980s. They hoped that
by illuminating that history [of the high school] we could not only shed light on
how the institution developed but also help educators and educational policy mak-
ers develop policies and practices that would enable high schools to realize their
heretofore failed promise of providing equal educational opportunity. (p. ix)
Angus and Mirel concentrate on the different interpretations of equal

educational opportunity that have characterized cyclical debates over the
high school curriculum since the turn of the century. An article of faith
among educators, they assert, has been providing different niches in the
high school curriculum since the 1920s for the mass of students compelled
to attend high school. In providing choices for high school students who
are diverse in abilities, interests, preparation, future plans, and motivation,
educators believed that they had made equal educational opportunity a
fact. The authors label this belief "curricular differentiation," one held
dearly and enthusiastically by "professional educators" (aka progressives)
who championed the comprehensive high school with its varied curricular
choices.
Opponents of curricular differentiation, according to Angus and Mirel,

advocate a uniform academic program that all students, regardless of their
varied interests, motivation, abilities, and future plans, must take. When all
students are exposed to a standardized academic curriculum, then and
only then, can there be true equality of educational opportunity. This
position was first articulated in the 1893 report of the Committee of Ten
that, according to the authors, was "the first call for a national curriculum"
(p. 10). Subsequent commissions and occasional lone voices called for all
students to take a uniform academic course throughout the next half-
century but were in the minority as curricular differentiation became main-
stream practice.
462 LARRY CUBAN
Not until the 1950s debates over drafting schools into defending the
nation's interests against Soviet Russia and, three decades later, a national
nervousness over the declining economic position of the United States in
global competitiveness did the Nation at Risk report (1983) and Goals 2000
renew the argument that high and demanding academic standards are
essential for students to perform well and a necessary boost to the econ-
omy. Thus, a counter belief held by a minority of reformers in the 20th
century defined equal educational opportunity as every single student tak-
ing a rigorous schedule of academic subjects.
The authors' thesis is that, contrary to most historians' interpretations,
differentiation has been the durable pattern dominating high school cur-
ricular for the past century rather than a uniform academic program for all
students. This dominant pattern occurred, according to the authors, be-
cause the imperative to keep all youth in high school until they graduate
and separate from the adult world is what drives differentiation and this
"shift to custodialism [has been] a fundamental change in the social and
economic function of the high school that consequently transformed the
nature of the institution" (p. 4). They assert that even during the 1980s and
1990s, when so many states implemented rules that students take addi-
tional and tougher academic courses, curricular differentiation-the ex-
ternal manifestation of the custodial mission-still proved resilient.
The Angus and Mirel book concentrates on "the debate between advo-
cates of uniform academic programs and supporters of curricular differ-
entiation" (p. 5) over the past century. While they do cover familiar ground
in analyzing the major reports of the 20th century and introduce the "usual
suspects" who played leading roles in these debates, they also offer empir-
ical support for their thesis in the form of the courses that students have
taken in two Michigan cities, across other states, and national data.
The seven chapters of the book chronologically trace the professional-
ization of curriculum planning, the expansion of the curriculum during
the progressive decades, the transformation of the high school into a mass
institution during the Great Depression and World War II, and the "tri-
umph of curricular differentiation" since 1950. The final chapter, "The
Restoration of the Academic Ideal? Upheaval and Reform, 1975-1995," will
leave readers with the distinct impression that the question mark is rhe-
torical: curricular differentiation remains the dominant pattern and the
way that equal educational opportunity will continue to be defined.
Angus and Mirel find this disheartening and offer ways that policymak-
ers could shift direction toward what the authors clearly prefer: a uniform
academic program that every student must take in high school.
Many educators still resist clear mandates to provide all students with opportunities
to master rigorous, academic coursework. Playing an educational form of "bait and
switch," these educators offer courses with academic titles but unchallenging con-
tent. As such, they maintain the structures of split-level education that has domi-
nated secondary education for most of this century.... There appear to be only a
small number of policy options that would eliminate such forms of educational
malpractice-the establishment of a national curriculum ... or ... the imple-
mentation of high-quality national educational standards in every academic su

ject area, standards that state and local school districts can adopt and enfor
(pp. 195-96)
The authors are pessimistic about their prescriptions ever occurring.

They end with a ringing call for action: "Unless the campaign for national
standards can be revitalized, the most exciting and promising opportunity
for improving American secondary education in this century will have been
squandered. Worse, the old order will triumph again" (p. 196).
I have dropped enough hints along the way to suggest that Angus and
Mirel have constructed a melodrama where heroes and villains contend
with one another and the villains-hiss, hiss-prove victorious. In this case
the villains are professional educators, educationists, progressive educa-
tors, etc. etc. Time and again, the authors point to "educators" as the
people who have historically created inequality of educational opportunity
through curricular differentiation and squashed efforts to raise academic
standards. I only cite one of the many references to give a flavor of the
indictment:
For the most part, educational professional have gotten American high schools into
their present difficulties, and those educational leaders who are willing to pursue
policies to dramatically change these schools remain a distinct minority. Given their
failure to improve the quality of education for most high school students in the
past, there seems little reason to believe that more input from professional educa-
tors ... will lead to greatly improved results in the future. (pp. 181-82)
Unfortunately, the authors' interpretations of the course-taking data

they present falls short of indicting professional educators. When the data
undermine their thesis of the dominance of curricular differentiation, for
example, 60 percent of students' courses were academic in the 1940s
(pp. 142-43), they explain it away. William Wraga's recounting of other
specific instances where Angus and Mirel discount evidence that weakens
their thesis makes the same point (Wraga, 2000).
Equally disconcerting was their citing of evidence that showed other
forces at work, besides professional educators, which influenced course-
taking patterns without acknowledging even the possibility of alternative
explanations. In Michigan, for example, the authors recount how the leg-
islature intervened in 1990 and created a model core curriculum (pp. 184-
86). Or in discussing the case of Detroit, the authors describe the impact
of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, Milliken v. Bradley (1971) where the
decision mandated the building of five vocational high schools. Profes-
sional educators sat in the wings and were not agents of curricular differ-
entiation. Mirel's treatment of the same decision in The Rise and Fall of an
Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-1981 leaves little doubt that he recognizes
how external factors far beyond educators' reach shaped educational pol-
icy and course-taking patterns (1993, pp. 344-48).
Blaming progressives from an earlier era and professional educators
from the present is a familiar tack taken by historians (Ravitch, 1983, 2000),
464 LARRY CUBAN
and ardent academic reformers (Hirsch, 1996). Such censure heaped upon
academic reformers, practitioners, and administrators would surprise Her-
bert Kliebard and Ed McClellan, whose histories underscore the power of
political coalitions and constituencies lobbying for curricular changes to
advance moral education and vocationalism-neither of which appear in
The Failed Promise. Surely, historian Raymond Callahan (1962) would have
been surprised also. Callahan argued that the job insecurity of school
superintendents-villains in the Angus and Mirel study-made them so
vulnerable to business influence that they adopted the language, strategy,
and programs urged by business-led coalitions in the early decades of the
20th century.
My point is that Angus and Mirel, in blaming practitioners, administra-
tors, and academics, fail to explore alternative explanations. They dismiss
previous historians' work as short-sighted or uninformed. They ignore
previously offered explanations. For example, Cremin and others argued
that sheer numbers of students attending school made popular education
a virtual contradiction in terms (Cremin, 1990). Callahan (1962), Kliebard
(1986), and Kantor and Tyack (1982) demonstrated the power of orga-
nized political coalitions to shape curricular changes and the respon-
siveness-or vulnerability-of school officials to these constituencies.
The Failed Promise of the American High School, then, is a passionate, one-
sided history that filters the past through the sieve of the authors' strong
commitments to reform the high school by establishing a uniform aca-
demic curriculum for each and every student. Angus and Mirel offer read-
ers a skewed presentist account of a contemporary policy issue.
***
Considering these three histories and others mentioned in

can historians help school reformers? Yes and no. The "no"
dispatch. Interpreting the past through the narrow lens of a
temporary policy produces a history closer to a lawyer's brie
than a history that informs contemporary policymakers of
tional and political context, contingency, chance, and indiv
combine to create past policy and practice in schools. Prese
(the far left of the continuum), then, robs both policymake
tioners, informed citizens and nonspecialists, of the messy dilem
generations of policymakers faced, what alternatives they co
which ones they ignored), and the varied factors that cam
their decision making.
The "yes" to the question contains the above elements
sensitive and nonpolicy historians (ones in the middle and
continuum), aware of their commitments and experiences,
no specific policy prescriptions, can convey in richly textu
These are accounts that capture the conflicting values, varie
inevitable ambiguities that make the past similar in some re
present, albeit in very different contexts. Such historians c
render judgments about events, people, and outcomes, but these are ju
ments abundantly supported by the available evidence. A few examples
such histories (and these are ones that I believe illustrate the point; oth
could easily make different choices) are Learning Together (Tyack & Hansot
1990), Pillars of the Republic (Kaestle, 1983), The Making of an American Hi
School (Labaree, 1988), Schooling for All (Katznelson & Weir, 1985), an
Mirel's study of the Detroit school system between 1907-1981 (1993).
In these histories, contemporary policymakers can find comparison
and contrasts with current issues facing them. They might even come
appreciate the range of alternatives and conflicting forces impinging
earlier generations of policymakers and the choices that were made. Su
histories inform the making of policy rather than urge decisionmak
toward particular current reforms. Historians can help school reforme
if, and only if-those reformers are open-minded and willing to aban
their previous, often incomplete and fractured, images of the past.
NOTES
1. A comprehensive analysis of historians and policy making is in Maris Vin

History and Educational Policy Making (New Haven, CT: Yale University P
1999), see Chapter 1. One example underscores the connection between po
decisions and history. Historians testify in court cases where judges make
sions that become policy. Historian John Hope Franklin gathered data fo
brief lawyers submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Brown v. Bo
Education (1954) decision. In a 1985 trial, historian Rosalind Rosenberg tes
as an expert witness for Sears, Roebuck & Company in a sex discriminatio
(as did historian Alice Kessler-Harris for the plaintiffs). A year later, the
ruled in favor of Sears not discriminating against female employees. A
months later the decision and the case itself was on the program at the a
conference of the Organization of American Historians. John Hope Fran
Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana
University Press, 1989), pp. 311-13; Jon Wiener, Professors, Politics, and Pop
don: Verso, 1991), pp. 23-33.
2. Historians who have, in my opinion, written clearly and persuasively abo
core dilemma that scholars face in reconciling the tensions between advo
for particular policy positions and scholarly demands for objectivity are
Novick, The Noble Dream (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988);
Hope Franklin, "The Dilemma of the American Negro Scholar" and "Histo
and Public Policy" in Race and History, pp. 295-320; David Potter, "C. V
Woodward and The Uses of History" in Marcus Cunliffe and Robin Winks
Pastmasters: Some Essays on American Historians (New York: Harper & Row,
pp. 375-408; William E. Leuchtenburg, "The Historian and the Public Re
American Historical Review 97 (1): 17-18.
3. Obviously, this is my broad (and sketchy) interpretation of the education
one that historians would challenge (and should). Tinkering toward Utopia
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995) best lays out my views and t
my co-author David Tyack about cycles of change and constancy. For exa
of different versions of the history of American education, see Lawrence C
in's three-volume magisterial account of a broadly construed education
encompasses far more than public and private schools. See American Trad
The Colonial Experience, 1607-1 783 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), The Na
466 LARRY CUBAN
Experience, 1783-1876 (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), The Metropolitan Experi-
ence, 1876-1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988). For different interpretations
of the same past or portions of it, see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, School-
ing in Capitalist America: Education and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New
York: Basic Books, 1976), James Anderson The Education of Blacks in the South,
1860-1935 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), and
Kathleen Weiler, Country School Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1998).
4. This continuum is a tool to distinguish between different types of historians and
display their variety in interpreting the past. As in all continua, no either-or
categorization is intended. If anything, the point of this continuum is to illus-
trate that most historians of education, like most scholars, are hybrids, scattered
along this continuum rather than lodged at one end or the other. The limita-
tions of the continuum are also obvious. For example, some historians of edu-
cation write closer to the nonpolicy side of the continuum early in their career
but edge toward the policy-sensitive middle as they get older. The reverse also
occurs when policy-sensitive ones move either to the right or left of the contin-
uum in their later years. The continuum, then, reflects no change; it is static.
REFERENCES
Anderson, J. 1988. The education of blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, N
University of North Carolina Press.
Bowles, S., and H. Gintis. 1976. Schooling in capitalist America: Education and
contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books.
Callahan, R. 1962. Education and the cult of efficiency. Chicago, IL: Universit
Chicago Press.
Cremin, L. 1970. American tradition: The colonial experience, 1607-1783. New Y
Harper & Row.
1980. The national experience, 1783-1876. New York: Harper & Row.
1988. The metropolitan experience, 1876-1980. New York: Harper & Row.
1990. Popular education and its discontents. New York: Harper & Row.
Dreeben, R. 1973. The school as a workplace. In The second handbook of researc
teaching, W. Traver (ed.), pp. 450-73. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
Franklin, J. H. 1989. The dilemma of the American Negro scholar and Histor
and public policy. In Race and History, J. H. Franklin, pp. 295-320. Baton Ro
LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Hansen, D. 1995. The call to teach. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hirsch, E. D. 1996. The schools we need. New York: Doubleday.
Jackson, P. 1968. Life in classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Kaestle, C. 1983. Pillars of the republic. New York: Hill and Wang.
Kantor, H., and D. Tyack. 1982. Work, youth, and schooling. Stanford, CA: Stanf
University Press.
Katznelson, I., and M. Weir. 1985. Schoolingfor all. New York: Basic Books.
Kliebard, H. 1986. The struggle for the American curriculum, 1893-1958. Lon
Routledge, Kegan & Paul.
Larabee, D. 1988. The making of an American high school. New Haven, CT:
University Press.
Leuchtenburg, W. E. 1992. The historian and the public realm. American Histo
Review 97 (1): 17-18.
Mirel, J. 1993. The rise and fall of an urban school system: Detroit, 1907-1981. A
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Neustadt, R., and E. May. 1986. Thinking in time: The uses of history for decision mak
New York: Free Press.
Novick, P. 1988. The noble dream. New York: Camb

Potter, D. 1969. C. Vann Woodward and the uses
essays on American historians, M. Cunliffe and
York: Harper & Row.
Ravitch, D. 1983. The troubled crusade. New York: B
2000. Left behind. New York: Simon and Schus
Ravitch, D., and M. Vinovskis (eds.). 1995. Learning f
us about school reform. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hop
Scott, J. 1993. Scholars propose "history police" patr
21.
Tyack, D. 1979. History and policy-making. In American education: Diversity and
research, H. Walberg, ed., pp. 45-57. Washington, DC: Voice of America.
Tyack, D., and L. Cuban. 1995. Tinkering toward utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Tyack, D., and E. Hansot. 1990. Learning together. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Vinovskis, M. 1999. History and educational policy making. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press.
Wraga, W. 2000. Review of The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890-1995.
History of Education Quarterly 40: 226-29.
Weiler, K. 1998. Country school women. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Review: Can Historians Help School Reformers?

Can Historians Help School Reformers?

Richard Neustadt, a professor of public administration, and historian

struggles over conflicting institutional goals that included both scholars

As I have noted, historians of education include those who plumb ar-

policy analysis and redefining a current problem by examining previous

Ask questions anchored in Ask questions anchored in Ask questions

FIGURE 1. Continuum of Historians

MORAL EDUCATION IN AMERICA

In 106 pages of text, Edward McClellan traces the history of moral e

concisely how Protestant Christian values permeated 19th century public

of a progressive view of moral education that countered the pervasive

Although this work seeks to inform contemporary discussion of moral education, it

McClellan avoids judging the worth of different moral education pro-

Herbert Kliebard's Schooled to Work, builds on his earlier intellectu

vocational education climbing aboard the escalator of social mobility. As

policy statements as expressions of regard and messages of status.... Perhaps more

As a longtime admirer of Kliebard's intellectual histories of curriculu

THE FAIIED PROMISE OF THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL,

Angus and Mirel concentrate on the different interpretations of equal

Opponents of curricular differentiation, according to Angus and Mirel,

mentation of high-quality national educational standards in every academic su

The authors are pessimistic about their prescriptions ever occurring.

Unfortunately, the authors' interpretations of the course-taking data

Considering these three histories and others mentioned in

1. A comprehensive analysis of historians and policy making is in Maris Vin

Novick, P. 1988. The noble dream. New York: Camb

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