Chapter 5: Education for Social Reconstruction in Critical Context

As the essays in this book attest, Social Reconstructionism or education for social transformation, which developed in the 1920s and 30s, remains an influential school of thought in the current education reform dialogue. At the same time, Reconstructionism has had only a marginal influence on educational policy and practice over the past century. This relative lack of influence is not surprising, given the Reconstructionists’ call for public education to play a leading role in the radical transformation of the American political and economic system, a program in direct conflict with the dominant culture’s commitment to the ideologies of individualism and free market economic theory. Furthermore, since K–12 schooling has, in general, functioned to reproduce the dominant social order, it would be more plausible to argue (as did orthodox Marxists) that the current economic and political systems would need to undergo radical change before fundamental change in education could take place.