Laggards, Morons, Human Clinkers, and Other Peculiar Kids: Progressivism and Student Difference in Shaping Public Education in the United States

Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society. Web site: http://www.ovpes.org/journal.htm

Y

10

Educational History; United States History; Public Education; Social Change; School Administration; Student Diversity; Attendance; Dropouts; Progressive Education; Special Education; Disabilities; Urban Schools

0160-7561

The year was 1909. The United States was in the throes of tremendous social and institutional changes: a rapidly diversifying population, dramatic shifts in political and economic structures, the rise of Progressivism as a paradigm for social reform and social control, and the intense and often grating sounds of a public education system really beginning to come into its own across the nation. During that year, Leonard P. Ayres and the Russell Sage Foundation published a book that fit the times perfectly. "Laggards in Our Schools: A Study of Retardation and Elimination in City School Systems" took a detailed and often harsh look at public school development in the United States, paying particular attention to the growing pains all bureaucratic systems face at some point and relying heavily on the use of basic but revelatory quantitative data and Progressivist perspectives to critique the efficiency of large urban school operations. Ayres' basic thesis was that for school systems to function efficiently, school officials had to acknowledge, confront, and address the fact that significant numbers of children were not attending, performing, or behaving in ways that contributed to effective school administration and operation. (Contains 19 footnotes.)

ERIC

2010

EJ896301