American Public Education, A New Theory: The View Of Katz

Public education is always the main topic in the field of American educational history. Katz, an historian, dealt with the history of American public education since the twentieth century. He attacked the traditionalists opinions on the American public education, denied that the American public education was a constantly developing and helpful process, pointed out that the public school was not democratic and equal, and lastly thought of it as a cultural method used to control the working class.This thesis is comprised of five sections. In the first place, it discusses the arguments about public education in the field of American educational history, and respectively introduces the traditionalists' and the revisionists' point of views on public education. The traditionalists deemed that public education was a constantly developing and helpful process. The creation and development of public school was a greatest success American democratic politics had ever achieved. However, in the sixties of the twentieth century, the social crises shook people's faith in the public education. The revisionists put forth their opinions, saying that public school was not the performance of democracy and equality, but a tool by which the capitalists controlled the public.The second part describes the origins of the American public school. After the civil war, the industrial economics in America grew rapidly. The family, as a major educational institution before, was going to bankrupt and gradually replaced by the school. Katz thought, the public education system grew out of the capitalists' interests, so its purpose was not to serve the working class, but to inculcate the adolescence with acceptable social attitudes and shape their characters, to train workforces suitable for the industrial development, and to alleviate a series of social conflicts by using education.Thirdly, it is devoted to the alternatives of the American public education. In order to reveal the emergency of the bureaucracy in American education, Katz introduced four different organizational models in the early of nineteenth century. They were paternalistic voluntarism, democratic localism, corporate voluntarism and incipient bureaucracy, which ultimately triumphed and still exists today. Each organizational model was based on some kind of social values and the analysis of them provides direct insight into the key value conflicts of nineteenth-century society. Schools under incipient bureaucracy mirrored the social and political structure of American society.The fourth section gives a survey of the results, failure reasons and suggestions of American public education. Katz wrote that the . schools were a thorough failure, which resulted from its internal system drawbacks. Schools existed to serve the capitalists and didn't better but contrarily sharpened social conflicts. Katz was quite sure that meaningful change could come to the existing system only through a redistribution of power and resources and a complete change of social structure before school reform.Lastly it concludes the academic influence of Katz's theories. Although other historians don't see eye to eye with Katz's views, they all accept and also pay lots of attention to his research methods. In his works, Katz uses quantitative method and case study to prove his theories and from then on, these two methods have been widely accepted and used. Katz also thinks that educational history should aim to serve the society.