Left Back
Subtitle: A Century of Failed School Reforms
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: August 29, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 560
ISBN-13: 9780684844176
Subjects: Education; History; Educational Reform; Education / Teaching; United States - General; United States; Public schools; Teaching Methods & Materials - General; Education / General; Educational Policy & Reform; 20th century; Educational change
First sentence: In the closing years of the nineteenth century, Americans prided themselves on their public schools.
Description: "Left Back recounts grandiose efforts by education reformers to use the schools to promote social and political goals, even when they diminished the schools' ability to educate children. It shows how generations of reformers have engaged in social engineering, advocating such innovations as industrial education, intelligence testing, curricular differentiation, and life-adjustment education. These reformers, she demonstrates, simultaneously mounted vigorous campaigns against academic studies.".

"In describing the wars between competing traditions of education, Ravitch points the way to reviving American education. She argues that all students have the capacity to learn and that all are equally deserving of a solid liberal arts education. Left Back addresses issues of the utmost importance and urgency. It is a large work of history that by recovering the past illuminates a future."--BOOK JACKET.