How Teachers Might Have Taught but Most Didn’t, and Why

Abstract

We discuss one of the oldest ambitions in U.S. education: that teachers should treat children as active learners, teaching should be intellectually engaging, teachers should respect students’ thinking, and schools should cultivate thoughtful work. These ideas originated when Horace Mann and his allies campaigned for them. We revisit them and take up a key problem in the study of U.S. schooling: can those ambitions be turned into regular work in many classrooms?

Keywords:

• Policy and practice
• educational reform
• instructional improvement

Acknowledgments

We thank Professors Larry Cuban and Suzanne Wilson for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).