The paramount educational need of America is to complete the dream of the public schools by focusing attention on their public purpose as the highest priority. The public schools can assist the disparate, dispirited, and dse. (HMD)

The prime purpose of the public school is to serve the general welfare of a democratic society, by assuring that the knowledge and understanding necessary to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship are not only made available but actively inculcated. (Author)

The history of education must contain a balance between interpretation of the school itself and the school in its broader social and political context. Such a balance would be a constructive relief fromearlier revisionist theory viewing American schooling as mis-education or as a minor player next to other socializing and educating institutions.…

The choice that a voucher proposition offers is between weakening the public schools still further by encouraging flight from them and strengthening the public schools by recalling them to their historic purpose of promoting the ideals of the democratic civic community. (Author)

The point is made that the highest priority for improvement on all levels of education for the next quarter of a century lies in an intensified search for education's role in achieving freedom, equality, and community, and that the very highest priority should be given to the search for a viable, inclusive, and just political community. (JD)

The issue is what the schools can and should do to achieve what we proclaim to be our historic political goals: freedom, equality, justice, and community. (Author/IRT)

In the last fifteen years revisionists have attacked the ascendency of Ellwood P. Cubberly, and his pietistic picture of the public school, with historical perspectives that relegate public education to being one of many educational functions in American culture and with the view that public schools "miseducate" the American people.…

Analyzes the erosion of America's faith in public education as a cultural and social element in building a sense of national community, calling for a mobilization to insist that the public schools concentrate as they never have before on the task of building a sense of civic cohesion among all people of the country. (JM)

This article is a statement of support for free American public education. The development of the public education system is described. Note is taken of the struggles for control, financing problems, court decisions which provide for free access, and the divisive cultural conflicts which have spurred movements toward alternative systems. (SM)

This paper discusses the current status of civic education in the United States and the place of civic education in the current movement to establish national goals and standards for education. Most current reform efforts (e.g., America 2000) approach civic education by means of increasing the role of history and geography in the curriculum.…

Teacher education must produce teachers who can ensure that schooling generates future good citizens. The paper examines regional and national reform, the civic foundations of education, and the need for dedicated, well-trained people to enter public service committed to public good. A description of CIVITAS, a citizenship project, is included.…

This response to Tozer's position paper agrees that the social foundations of education (SFE) is distinct from foundations of education. The paper describes the development of SFE, explaining that the prime task of foundations is to prepare teachers to promote values that define contemporary American values. (SM)