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Chargement... Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memorypar Jonathan Zimmerman
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The little red schoolhouse has all but disappeared in the United States, but its importance in national memory remains unshakable. This engaging book examines the history of the one-room school and how successive generations of Americans have remembered-and just as often misremembered-this powerful national icon. Drawing on a rich range of sources, from firsthand accounts to poems, songs, and films, Jonathan Zimmerman traces the evolution of attitudes toward the little red schoolhouse from the late nineteenth century to the present day. At times it was celebrated as a symbol of lost rural virtues or America's democratic heritage; at others it was denounced as the epitome of inefficiency and substandard academics. And because the one-room school has been a useful emblem for liberal, conservative, and other agendas, the truth of its history has sometimes been stretched. Yet the idyllic image of the schoolhouse still unites Americans. For more than a century, it has embodied the nation's best aspirations and-especially-its continuing faith in education itself. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)371.6Social sciences Education Teachers, Methods, and Discipline School premises and equipmentClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Jonathan Zimmerman's brief, brisk book is a tour de force history of the one-room rural schoolhouse in America (not all of them were "little" and most were not red) and an incisive analysis of the layers of meaning that have been attached to it. Zimmerman is a historian and this is a scholarly book: firmly grounded in primary sources, and rich with the voices of the students, teachers, and townspeople whose lives bumped up against such schools. He gives shape and meaning to the complex story they tell without smoothing away its complexity in the interest of a more streamlined narrative. His central theme is that the little red schoolhouse has become a potent, protean symbol because its complex history – haven and hellhole, bastion of mindless tradition and hotbed of innovation – can support (almost) pundit willing to mine it selectively.
Zimmerman himself mines that history comprehensively and thoughtfully, and writes about it in smooth, graceful prose that makes Small Wonder an engaging read. Anyone interested in the history and politics of American education, or in the stories that Americans (collectively) tell about themselves, will find it fascinating. ( )