Public Education: An Autopsy

By Myron Lieberman

Book Overview

In this blistering critique of our failing public schools and our fuzzy thinking about how to fix them, Myron Lieberman explains why public education is in irreversible and terminal decline and tells us what we must do to get American schooling back on track. No other book on educational policy or reform covers such a broad range of issues or draws upon such extensive empirical data across such diverse academic disciplines. This is a refreshingly clear analysis of our educational crisis and a rallying cry for market-system approaches to school reform. Nobody emerges unscathed--Lieberman's analysis challenges the advocates of choice as well as the defenders of the public schools.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674722329
• ISBN13: 9780674722323
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 379 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Public Education

The year 1989 was a historic watershed: the Berlin Wall came down and the communist world stood exposed as a failed utopian experiment. That collapse should have prodded us to weigh the worth of other socialist ventures, especially when even the "democratic social welfare" states of Western Europe such as Sweden seem increasingly incapacitated by the intrinsic fallacies of Marxist ideology. Socialism's demonstrable failure--the inability of government to effectively own and control of the means of production--should instruct all of us as we chart our paths into the 21st century. Exposed by this failure is one of the most important of all political questions: what is the real meaning of "equality," the actual equality embedded in the essence of our humanity. On this issue, Alexis de Tocqueville astutely noted: "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." We often fail to place education within the broader context of ethics and politics, which always struggle with such issues as freedom and equality. To liberate or to equalize is a choice educators must make. Some educational theories seek to grant equal opportunity to all at the point of access, then allowing free persons to perform in accord with their talents and character. Other educational theories seek to impose, through compensatory mechanisms of various sorts, an equality of "outcomes" which level individuals to a common denominator dictated by "fairness." We who teach often feel like hanging our heads--and hardening our hearts--when confronted with the "latest" study of the "failure" of America's educational system. Year by year, even when "new instruments" are designed to more accurately measure student accomplishment (such as the recent exam developed in California allowing for ethnic diversity and encouraging thought rather than recall), the evidence mounts that today's students are simply not learning as they should. (The California test revealed that only seven percent of the students are proficient in mathematics!) Ironically, it seems, the more public education fails the more educators insist that the sole solution is money and facilities, more programs and classes--more of what's steadily failing: public education! Myron Lieberman's latest work, Public Education: An Autopsy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, c. 1993), adds detailed indictments to the familiar litany of laments for our students' poor performance. But, in addition, it includes a prescription for renewal: alongside the public schools, he urges, we should allow a free market system to create hosts of more effective alternatives. At the very least, the author argues, even a step toward "market socialism" would allow options in education which would outperform the centralized, monopolistic, socialistic, government-run school sy

Details the flaws of the public education model

Unlike Sheldon Richman's passionate libertarian polemic, Separating School & State, which is like the light cavalry slashing through the defenses of the public education status quo, Myron Lieberman's Public Education An Autopsy is a dry, dispassionate examination of why public education is so difficult to reform and contrasts how certain problems would be handled better in the marketplace.Lieberman stresses that the public education organizations, such as the NEA, are more focused on protecting the interests of the producers of education rather than catering to the needs of the consumers. For example, even though most bilingual education programs fail to teach Hispanic students English, the NEA and ethnic activist groups will still stridently support the programs because it provides jobs and patronage for their supporters. Though the jury is still out on bilingual education, it appears that since Proposition 209 in California passed, Hispanic students are doing well in English immersion. But, in the absence of voter pressure, the public schools never would have implemented this approach on its own.Lieberman takes great pains to show that he being fair and balanced in this book, which may frustrate some libertarians who agree with Lieberman that we need a free market in education. But this book is very important reading for anyone who cares about education in America and the direction it needs to take.

Best book available on American public education.

The one book I most strongly recommend that readers interested in education reform start with is Dr. Myron Lieberman's Public Education: An Autopsy (1993). Despite its radical-sounding title, Dr. Lieberman's book is thorough and moderate in its approach to these issues. Dr. Lieberman began his working career as a schoolteacher in the same urban public school he attended as a child. He is a life member of the National Education Association and has been writing books about education reform since 1956. Dr. Lieberman is also trained as a lawyer and spent many years as a negotiator for schoolteacher unions bargaining with school boards. Public Education: An Autopsy reflects the latest developments in Dr. Lieberman's thinking and is full of important information not found in other books about education. The book shows great compassion for learners, parents, and teachers and contains excellent endnotes guiding readers to additional research sources.