"Schoolhouse Crock"

An article by Peter Schrag appeared in the September 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine titled "Schoolhouse Crock: Fifty Years of Blaming America's Educational System for Our Stupidity" (Note:  This link requires a subscription to read the article.).  Schrag's credentials did not accompany his article, but a note indicates that he has written two books regarding America's education system.  Thus, the claims offered by Schrag could result from observation rather than elaborate experimentation and investigation.  Nonetheless, his claims feel compatible with what has happened over the last 50 years.

Schrag points immediately to the Russian launch of Sputnik to begin his argument.  He posits that this event forced Americans to doubt their education system, which had publicly been deemed questionable in recent years.  The fear of another country possessing mental-superiority frightened Americans; to abate this fear it is concluded that the education system must be reformed to guarantee America's mental hegemony.  The essay follows the government's participation in the design and redesign of America's classrooms and observes the common feeling that the education system of the last generation saw much more success, yet Schrag reports that people have always questioned the template of the present-day education system.  

Schrag's essay centers on the premise of education reform as a means to resolve present-day obstacles, which unchecked or unnoticed will persist for future generations--or so we think.  He ends with a clever, succinct summary: "[p]erhaps it is time we thought of schools as places where our children might simply learn something--not just for our benefit, not for the nation's, but for their own."