| This was a historical study which analyzed similarities and differences between selected reformers of the American education system during the decades of the 1950s and 1980s. These two decades were chosen because of similarities concerning competition between America and foreign countries: Russia in the fifties, and Japan, Germany, and Korea in the eighties. Two catalysts, Sputnik in 1957, and the Commission report A Nation at Risk in 1983, caused these years to be watershed years in American education.;Three reformers from the fifties, Arthur Bestor, Hyman Rickover, and James Conant, were compared and contrasted with four reformers from the eighties, Mortimer Adler, Ernest Boyer, Theodore Sizer, and John Goodlad. They were analyzed according to the following categories: purpose of school, curriculum, instruction, role of teachers, role of students, type of reform called for, and rationales for reform.;It is the contention of this study that while the reformers studied had several things in common, the selected reformers of the early fifties tended to place blame for the deterioration of the American education system upon leadership who espoused progressive and life adjustment educational philosophies, while the selected reformers of the eighties tended to blame the structure which has been entrenched for almost one hundred years. |
