At the puzzle party in March, the host showed us a shelf of books written by her late husband, Dr. Lawrence A. Cremin, Ph.D. He was an education historian, professor, and past president of Teachers’ College at Columbia in New York City. Among his books is a three-volume history of education in the U.S. from colonial times to 1980. The second volume in this series, American Education: The National Experience 1783-1876 won a Pulitzer Prize in historical writing. In all he has written at least ten books and co-authored several others. One of his books, The Republic and the School was referenced in a book I had to read for school, American Education by Joel Spring. I thought I would try reading at least one of his books both to sample our friend’s late husband’s work and because education is a topic that interests me. The Cal State L.A. library has several of his books in its collection. For my first try I picked the most recent and one of the shorter ones, Popular Education and Its Discontents. I figured if I liked it I could try one of the longer ones later, and if I didn’t it was just a short read at 134 pages. Since it was the most recent, I figured it would probably be most relevant to the current state of education in America.
Popular Education and Its Discontents is the expanded book form of the Inglis and Burton Lectures given by Dr. Cremin at Harvard University in March 1989. In the preface he describes the book as “coda” to his American Education trilogy. The book consists of three essays that I’m guessing correspond to the three lectures given. The first is about the popularization of education: the progressive attempt to make education available to all and adapted to society’s diversity and the obstacles in accomplishing that. The second is appropriately called “The Cacophony of Teaching” and it describes how education actually consists of school, family, and the media, mainly TV at the time. I liked this essay best because its points are even more relevant today. In addition to TV, students now have the Internet, cell phones, texting, and many other additions to the “cacophony”. The third essay is about using education to enact public policy and social change.
Dr. Cremin presents the ideas of many other education scholars and studies such as John Dewey and the early 1980’s report “A Nation at Risk”. He also presents his own thoughts and opinions that I found equally interesting and insightful such as the idea that the crisis isn’t the mediocrity of American education but “balancing the tremendous variety of demands Americans have made on their schools.” (Cremin p. 43) He seems to have slightly more optimistic yet also more realistic views than the experts he references. In the first essay he mentions that he was on Richard Heffner’s TV program The Open Mind to discuss whether the ideal of popular education was an impossible ideal or not. I’ve never heard of that program and I wonder if the footage is still around somewhere. In the “Cacophony” essay, Dr. Cremin has nothing but praise for the Children’s Television Workshop programs such as Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Square One TV, and 3-2-1 Contact. I used to watch the latter three, though my peers would’ve made fun of me if they knew. It’s nice to get some validation, albeit belated.
Though the book is insightful, readable and interesting, I wouldn’t categorize it with the relaxing escapist reading I normally do. I’m glad Dr. Cremin didn’t use many fancy elitist academic words that I’ve seen in many journals and texts on education. Probably the only word he used that I couldn’t figure out was “vitiation”. My random house dictionary defines vitiate as 1) to impair the quality of, and 2) to make legally invalid. He uses more “academic” forms of words such popularization and multitudeness. But their meaning is clear and he often defines the words when first using them. Some passages can be difficult to follow because he spends many pages explaining a long list of points. (E.g. “First (long paragraph) . . . Second (another long paragraph).” Sometimes he’ll switch between multiple points and I’m not sure where one stops and another starts. When describing a crisis over progressive education in Pasadena, I wish he would have mentioned one of the points of contention in detail rather than only saying that the issues were “philosophical, social, and financial—they ranged from skepticism over the core curriculum to school rezoning.” (Cremin p. 88) I wonder, what where they skeptical about in the core curriculum? Still the book was much more readable than other books I’ve read by choice such as The Dictionary of English Literature.
Dr. Cremin presents many interesting ideas, both his own and those of other experts. Many are historical such as how, through desegregation of schools, government sought to model the integrated idea would in the schools so it would eventually become the norm in society. The expert referenced, Hannah Arendt did believe the plan would work because “the children would eventually return to a pre-existing world of adults who had been incapable of solving racial discrimination in the first place.” (Cremin p. 94) Some ideas presented are counter-intuitive. Christopher Jenks argued that education would not be effective against poverty and that only redistribution of income would be effective. Dr. Cremin goes on to describe how education can help fight poverty, though it requires expensive and long-term support. He also concludes that education alone cannot solve problems of international competitiveness. To believe it could is to divert efforts away from those who can do something about it (p. 103). Some ideas just make sense. In “Cacophony” he states that schools cannot and should not be expected to satisfy all educational needs of students. He begins “Cacophony” with a quote stating that students used to learn their highest knowledge in the classroom but now school seems to distract them from learning the higher knowledge outside of class.
Though it is nearly twenty years old, the book rarely seems dated. It does refer to the now defunct Cold War when describing how the schools in the USSR are stratified by subject while the schools in the U.S. are stratified by quality. Dr. Cremin mentions the emerging trend of standardization in education that has now reached a whole new level with the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. He also predicts correctly that computers, communications media, and other technology will be used to an increasing extent in education. He never mentions the Internet, but that was still some years away. He also presents some ideas that are still not widely used in education. There’s the sensible concept of teaching (motivating?) students to seek out educational opportunities on their own. Even more radical is having the class as a whole be responsible for the performance of all its members rather than everyone getting individual grades. I’m not sure about that one, though I have studied forms of group learning. The early pages of the first essay contain an anecdote about a 1988 survey by the National Geographic Society measuring how many adults could name 13 countries on a map. The president of the Society made a big show of presenting the results. He said, “Have you heard of the lost generation? We have found them.” But when this president was asked to name the U.S. states contiguous with Texas, he was unable to do so. The story illustrates the likely common phenomenon of standards set for the young by adults that have been unable to unwilling to meet the standards themselves. (p. 11)
Popular Education and its Discontents presents a thorough and multilayered picture of education in the U.S. that remains current to this day. Unlike most academic texts it is readable and relevant, yet it’s also very insightful and contains some lesser known and complex ideas. Dr. Cremin touches nearly all aspects of education: its history, competing forces, teaching techniques, goals, and the odds of meeting those goals. I’ve learned as much or more from this text as I have from any other text on education. I would have liked to have attended the lectures he gave twenty years ago. It would be great if they had been recorded or filmed. Every educator, future educator, and policymaker should read this book. I’m sure it or some of his other books have been used in education courses. I plan to try to read one of his other books, one of the trilogy. I’m glad we have this personal connection.
Popular Education and Its Discontents is the expanded book form of the Inglis and Burton Lectures given by Dr. Cremin at Harvard University in March 1989. In the preface he describes the book as “coda” to his American Education trilogy. The book consists of three essays that I’m guessing correspond to the three lectures given. The first is about the popularization of education: the progressive attempt to make education available to all and adapted to society’s diversity and the obstacles in accomplishing that. The second is appropriately called “The Cacophony of Teaching” and it describes how education actually consists of school, family, and the media, mainly TV at the time. I liked this essay best because its points are even more relevant today. In addition to TV, students now have the Internet, cell phones, texting, and many other additions to the “cacophony”. The third essay is about using education to enact public policy and social change.
Dr. Cremin presents the ideas of many other education scholars and studies such as John Dewey and the early 1980’s report “A Nation at Risk”. He also presents his own thoughts and opinions that I found equally interesting and insightful such as the idea that the crisis isn’t the mediocrity of American education but “balancing the tremendous variety of demands Americans have made on their schools.” (Cremin p. 43) He seems to have slightly more optimistic yet also more realistic views than the experts he references. In the first essay he mentions that he was on Richard Heffner’s TV program The Open Mind to discuss whether the ideal of popular education was an impossible ideal or not. I’ve never heard of that program and I wonder if the footage is still around somewhere. In the “Cacophony” essay, Dr. Cremin has nothing but praise for the Children’s Television Workshop programs such as Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Square One TV, and 3-2-1 Contact. I used to watch the latter three, though my peers would’ve made fun of me if they knew. It’s nice to get some validation, albeit belated.
Though the book is insightful, readable and interesting, I wouldn’t categorize it with the relaxing escapist reading I normally do. I’m glad Dr. Cremin didn’t use many fancy elitist academic words that I’ve seen in many journals and texts on education. Probably the only word he used that I couldn’t figure out was “vitiation”. My random house dictionary defines vitiate as 1) to impair the quality of, and 2) to make legally invalid. He uses more “academic” forms of words such popularization and multitudeness. But their meaning is clear and he often defines the words when first using them. Some passages can be difficult to follow because he spends many pages explaining a long list of points. (E.g. “First (long paragraph) . . . Second (another long paragraph).” Sometimes he’ll switch between multiple points and I’m not sure where one stops and another starts. When describing a crisis over progressive education in Pasadena, I wish he would have mentioned one of the points of contention in detail rather than only saying that the issues were “philosophical, social, and financial—they ranged from skepticism over the core curriculum to school rezoning.” (Cremin p. 88) I wonder, what where they skeptical about in the core curriculum? Still the book was much more readable than other books I’ve read by choice such as The Dictionary of English Literature.
Dr. Cremin presents many interesting ideas, both his own and those of other experts. Many are historical such as how, through desegregation of schools, government sought to model the integrated idea would in the schools so it would eventually become the norm in society. The expert referenced, Hannah Arendt did believe the plan would work because “the children would eventually return to a pre-existing world of adults who had been incapable of solving racial discrimination in the first place.” (Cremin p. 94) Some ideas presented are counter-intuitive. Christopher Jenks argued that education would not be effective against poverty and that only redistribution of income would be effective. Dr. Cremin goes on to describe how education can help fight poverty, though it requires expensive and long-term support. He also concludes that education alone cannot solve problems of international competitiveness. To believe it could is to divert efforts away from those who can do something about it (p. 103). Some ideas just make sense. In “Cacophony” he states that schools cannot and should not be expected to satisfy all educational needs of students. He begins “Cacophony” with a quote stating that students used to learn their highest knowledge in the classroom but now school seems to distract them from learning the higher knowledge outside of class.
Though it is nearly twenty years old, the book rarely seems dated. It does refer to the now defunct Cold War when describing how the schools in the USSR are stratified by subject while the schools in the U.S. are stratified by quality. Dr. Cremin mentions the emerging trend of standardization in education that has now reached a whole new level with the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. He also predicts correctly that computers, communications media, and other technology will be used to an increasing extent in education. He never mentions the Internet, but that was still some years away. He also presents some ideas that are still not widely used in education. There’s the sensible concept of teaching (motivating?) students to seek out educational opportunities on their own. Even more radical is having the class as a whole be responsible for the performance of all its members rather than everyone getting individual grades. I’m not sure about that one, though I have studied forms of group learning. The early pages of the first essay contain an anecdote about a 1988 survey by the National Geographic Society measuring how many adults could name 13 countries on a map. The president of the Society made a big show of presenting the results. He said, “Have you heard of the lost generation? We have found them.” But when this president was asked to name the U.S. states contiguous with Texas, he was unable to do so. The story illustrates the likely common phenomenon of standards set for the young by adults that have been unable to unwilling to meet the standards themselves. (p. 11)
Popular Education and its Discontents presents a thorough and multilayered picture of education in the U.S. that remains current to this day. Unlike most academic texts it is readable and relevant, yet it’s also very insightful and contains some lesser known and complex ideas. Dr. Cremin touches nearly all aspects of education: its history, competing forces, teaching techniques, goals, and the odds of meeting those goals. I’ve learned as much or more from this text as I have from any other text on education. I would have liked to have attended the lectures he gave twenty years ago. It would be great if they had been recorded or filmed. Every educator, future educator, and policymaker should read this book. I’m sure it or some of his other books have been used in education courses. I plan to try to read one of his other books, one of the trilogy. I’m glad we have this personal connection.
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