Fred M.and Grace Hechinger
The history of American public school education is the re- peated triumph of hope over experience. Reform billed as new and revolutionary has often turned out to be an unconscious reprise of earlier innovations. Time and again after the early 1800s, novel ideas about teaching turned sour as their cham- pions insisted they had found "the one best way." We have aimed high and missed, adjusted our sights and missed again. We have never accepted the fact that there...