Hoosier Schools : Past And Present

Since the 1980s Americans have been fascinated by the prospect of reforming the public schools.

Demands by reformers and legislative leaders have included a return to the basics, a longer school year, better accountability through state-wide testing, more effective vocational training, and the preparation of a work force for a more global, technologically sophisticated economy.

Activist citizens are understandably preoccupied with the present.

They sometimes forget that schools are a product of history, that many proposed reforms were tried before with mixed results, and that understanding the past offers a valuable perspective on their current attempts to improve the schools.

Indiana turned to public schools in the mid-nineteenth century to help solve a host of social, political, and economic problems.

Despite fears of creeping federalism held by conservative critics, public schools remain largely a state and local responsibility.This volume presents a series of original studies on the history of school reform in Indiana, from the crucial decades before the Civil War to the most recent efforts to reshape local schools for a post-modern society. It offers perspective on the reoccurring struggle by successive generations to remake the public schools in a new image.

Why were public schools originally created? What were their central characteristics, and how well did they transform their mission in later periods?

What accounts for the changing nature of the curriculum, and the evolution of non-academic enthusiasms such as basketball in Indiana's high schools in the twentieth century?How well did the schools educate children who were poor and culturally and racially different?

How well did schools prepare youth for living in an industrial and then post-industrial society?

What are the key assumptions of the latest movements to reform the state's system of schools?

In a pluralistic society, where schools continue to be a battleground of ideas and hopes for the future, consensus is unlikely.

The contributors to "Hoosier Schools", however, offer an important survey of Indiana's educational past, hoping to ground current desires for change in the wisdom gleaned from history.