School: The Story of American Public Education

Narrated by Meryl Streep, this outstanding four-volume history of public education in America from 1770 to the present day combines archival footage, diary excerpts, and interviews with former teachers, parents, and students, to offer viewers a comprehensive overview of the role public schools have played in past and contemporary society. In the opening volume, as a fledgling democracy tried to get off the ground, the founding fathers saw the need for an informed and at least marginally educated populace (enough to read the newspaper and the tax notices sent out by the government). Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, and Horace Mann strove to create a publicly funded school system but struggled with differing opinions on whom to educate and for how long, sources for funding, and the nature of the curriculum, with perennial issues--race, economics, and religion--being raised at a very early stage. Volume two, opening in 1900, when only 6% of school children graduated from high school, traces the roles that child labor reform, the Great Depression, and immigration played in the evolution of the public school in the early 20th century; examines the impact of John Dewey's progressive educational methods; and looks at the advent of the culturally biased IQ test which not only determined a child's ability to learn, but was used to assign soldiers various places in combat during WWI. Volume three, beginning in 1950, explores how segregation, busing, and civil rights created a battlefield out of the public school, eventually spilling into the courts and legislation with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and President Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Acts, Title IX, and the Americans with Disabilities acts. The final volume leads off with a look at the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, before scrutinizing issues related to the privatization of public education, including vouchers, private schools, and charter schools (questioning whether they will produce better educated students), as well as the demand for higher academic standards. Overall, viewers are reminded that the public school system plays an integral part in society, teaching not only the three “R's” but forming civic and cultural beliefs and attitudes as well. All of us should care deeply about what goes on in the classroom, a point made beautifully by this critical paean to American public education. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: J, H, C, P. (L. Stevens)