The School in the United States: A Documentary History - Softcover

Students come alive when dealing with primary sources. Yet no current History of Education text supplies primary source documents. Fraser’s unique text is a documentary history of education in the United States and can save the instructor from doing a good deal of photocopying. It consists of primary source documents which illustrate and map the establishment and evolution of education in America. For example, the text includes documents such as Beecher’s “Essay on the Education of Female Teachers,” “A Nation At Risk: Report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education,” and selections from Dewey’s School and Society and Holt’s How Children Fail. Introductions and explanations frame the primary sources to help students understand the background and context of the documents. The book can be used as a main or a supplemental text at either the undergraduate or graduate level.

James W. Fraser is Professor of History and Education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. His teaching includes courses in the History of American Education and Inquiries into Teaching and Learning (NYUs Introduction to Education course, which he coordinates). He has also served as NYU liaison to the New Design High School, a public high school in New Yorks Lower East Side, and to Facing History and Ourselves. In addition, Fraser is Senior Vice President for Programs at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey. At the Foundation he is responsible for coordinating the work of the different Fellowship programs, especially the Foundations new signature program, Fellowships for Teachers. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the History of Education Quarterly. Fraser was the founding dean of Northeastern Universitys School of Education, serving from 1999 to 2004. He was a member and chair of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Education Deans Council, the Boston School Committee Nominating Committee, and other boards. He was also a lecturer in the Program in Religion and Secondary Education at the Harvard University Divinity School from 1997 to 2004. He has taught at Lesley University, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Boston University, and Public School 76 Manhattan. He is an ordained minister and was pastor of Grace Church in East Boston from 1986 to 2006.