CHAPTER 1: Public Schooling in Hard Times: Adaptation and Invention Remain Possibilities

Americans currently endure a ruptured economy, polarized politics, and a possible future of continuing warfare abroad. The American sense of community that we once shared appears now to be fractured; seemingly beyond repair. Others of us, mainly people of color, never held full membership in that community and most continue to live near but not sufficiently inside its invisible but quite real boundaries. Our public schooling mirrors the general society and, thus, shares most of these troubles and others that relate to them.

We Americans also hold memories, however fragile, of hard times that previously engulfed our society and its schools during as well as across specific periods of our national history. We remember, as well, episodes, and ideas and legislation that different ones of us believe helped our society and schools not only to survive but also to overcome, at least in part, especially exasperatingly hard times that we have known.