Synopses & Reviews
What do America's children learn about American history, American values, and human decency? Who decides? In this absorbing book, Jonathan Zimmerman tells the dramatic story of conflict, compromise, and more conflict over the teaching of history and morality in twentieth-century America.
In history, whose stories are told, and how? As Zimmerman reveals, multiculturalism began long ago. Starting in the 1920s, various immigrant groups--the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, even the newly arrived Eastern European Jews--urged school systems and textbook publishers to include their stories in the teaching of American history. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and '70s brought similar criticism of the white version of American history, and in the end, textbooks and curricula have offered a more inclusive account of American progress in freedom and justice.
But moral and religious education, Zimmerman argues, will remain on much thornier ground. In battles over school prayer or sex education, each side argues from such deeply held beliefs that they rarely understand one another's reasoning, let alone find a middle ground for compromise. Here there have been no resolutions to calm the teaching of history. All the same, Zimmerman argues, the strong American tradition of pluralism has softened the edges of the most rigorous moral and religious absolutism.
Review
Zimmerman argues that the educational wars over religion in the schools and the content of history and social studies courses are separate battles with different stakes, and that the former have been more contentious than the latter. He offers histories of both since the 1920s to illustrate his point and concludes with suggestions about how the religious wars might be resolved. This is a thought-provoking and well-written book...[It] is essential reading for anyone concerned with these issues. Library Journal
Review
Whose America? is original in its historical argument, thorough in its scholarship, lively in its style, and timely in its subject. It cuts through the polarized rhetoric of the culture wars and shows the virtue of controversy: "debating our differences may be the only thing that holds us together." David Tyack, Professor of Education and History, Stanford University
Review
Jonathan Zimmerman has written a terrific book. Beautifully written and deeply informed, Whose America? addresses issues in American education, politics and identity that are enormously important. It is the best study yet done of political battles about curriculum, how political horse-trading on all sides has shaped the nature and substance of textbook versions of history, and it has great relevance to debates currently raging about what is taught in schools, in matters of facts and values. On these inflammatory subjects, Zimmerman's even-handed treatment of all sides of these deeply divisive issues is one of the book's great strengths, and offers a lesson in itself to future historians. Jeffrey Mirel, Professor of Educational Studies and History, University of Michigan
Review
Jonathan Zimmerman's provocative book reminds us that the passionately argued "culture wars" in American public schools have a long history in America's public schools. Whose America? illuminates those battles, old and new, with impressive scholarship and story-telling, and deep understanding of the combatants on all sides. Diane Ravitch, Research Professor, New York University School of Education
Review
Zimmerman examines the culture wars that have been fought in America's schools since the Civil War and divides what is commonly held to be one battle into two distinct conflicts, each with its own unique beginnings...By placing these conflicts within their historical context, the author leads readers to a deeper understanding of the issues and how they have influenced and continue to influence public school instruction. [A] landmark piece of scholarship. Mark Alan Williams
Review
Zimmerman does make a convincing argument. Examples of history textbooks published today substantiate his claim of a diversity coexisting with dullness. So, what exactly does Zimmerman's position mean for the classroom? This book calls for a reexamination of how U.S. history is taught
This call for presenting multiple perspectives in American history classrooms is a timely one. M. Engel - Choice
Synopsis
What do America's children learn about American history, American values, and human decency? Who decides? In this absorbing book, Jonathan Zimmerman tells the dramatic story of conflict, compromise, and more conflict over the teaching of history and morality in twentieth-century America.
In history, whose stories are told, and how? As Zimmerman reveals, multiculturalism began long ago. Starting in the 1920s, various immigrant groups--the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, even the newly arrived Eastern European Jews--urged school systems and textbook publishers to include their stories in the teaching of American history. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and '70s brought similar criticism of the white version of American history, and in the end, textbooks and curricula have offered a more inclusive account of American progress in freedom and justice.
But moral and religious education, Zimmerman argues, will remain on much thornier ground. In battles over school prayer or sex education, each side argues from such deeply held beliefs that they rarely understand one another's reasoning, let alone find a middle ground for compromise. Here there have been no resolutions to calm the teaching of history. All the same, Zimmerman argues, the strong American tradition of pluralism has softened the edges of the most rigorous moral and religious absolutism.
Synopsis
As a result of years of urging from various ethnic groups, textbooks and curricula now offer an inclusive account of American progress in freedom and justice. However, moral and religious education remain on much thornier ground. In this absorbing book, Jonathan Zimmerman tells the dramatic story of compromise and conflict over the teaching of history and morality in twentieth-century America.
Synopsis
has softened the edges of the most rigorous moral and religious absolutism.
Synopsis
In the inaugural volume in our new History and Philosophy of Education series, Adam Laats and Harvey Siegel examine both the historical and philosophical issues at the heart of the controversies about evolution. What Americans say we “know” about evolution has become hopelessly muddled in what we “believe.” Yet by placing those who opposed the teaching of evolution within their historical context, historian Adam Laats shows how these individuals were not eccentric or idiosyncratic, but rather must be understood as part of a long tradition of religious dissent in American education. The status of evolution-opposition as a minority position held by a dissenting group inevitably raises key philosophical issues, which philosopher Harvey Siegel addresses in the second half of the book. Siegel aims to disentangle questions of knowledge from questions of belief, addressing such problems as what scientific theory is, what the State’s obligation is with respect to biology education, and whether it must be neutral in its curriculums. The authors argue that biology teachers need to aim to foster student knowledge and understanding of evolution, if not necessarily belief in it. It is, they assert, the best extant scientific account of its domain, and should be taught as such. With their combined historical and philosophical perspective, Laats and Siegel suggest ways of overcoming the controversy that give both evolutionary theory its scientific due and its opponents’ objections to it religious legitimacy.
About the Author
Jonathan Zimmerman is Professor of Education and History at the Steinhardt School of Education and in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University. He spent two years as a teacher with the Peace Corps in Nepal.
Steinhardt School of Education, New York University
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction The Evolution of an Educational Controversy
1 Higher Education and a New Culture of Science
2 Evolution Education in a Jazz Age
3 The Dog That Didn’t Bark
4 A New Minority
5 Evolution, Creation, Science, Religion, and Public Education
6 Beyond “Creation Science”: The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design
7 Science Education: Aims and Constraints; Belief versus Understanding
8 A Question of Culture?
Conclusion Evolution as Education
Notes
Index