Education: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

These liberal education reformers were attempting to reconcile what the historian of education David Labaree has called the three competing ideals in American education, each corresponding to a different end goal and a different model of the student subject. The goal of “democratic equality” sees students as citizens, with the role of schools being

the perennial debate over what schools are for. The fault line in these debates is this – should schools be places where adults transmit to children the academic knowledge that society deems valuable? Or places where children are allowed to follow their own curiosity, wherever it takes them?