Themes Of Someone Has To Fail

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The major themes presented in chapters 2 and 3 of Someone Has to Fail is to help the reader gain an understanding behind the driving factors that established the American school system in the beginning, back before the United States was even a county. It is also to help the reader to develop an understanding of the many movements of reform that have played a major role in shaping the educational system as we in America know it today. As the colonies began, no formal system of schooling existed. Families planned with master craftsmen to work with their children to prepare and train them for a job in the family business. Beyond “career preparation”, the driving force behind being literate was religious motivation. Protestants needed to be able to read the Bible and education was a means to that end. What was interesting to me was that the book mentioned that “the religious view stimulated top-down efforts by the government and the church to provide education for the people”(Labaree 2010, p. 48). It is this top down approach from the government, controlling education, that has worked to push any religious aspect out of the public schools today. Education in America became a source for social reform and advancement for individuals as more and more people began to want to be educated …show more content…

Political progressives had to deal with the new economic realities of our country with the emergence of the corporate industrial economy. With this, a new problem of the need to educate the masses developed, including the many immigrants in the U.S., coming to the country for new jobs. These people saw education as the way to improve their situation and became consumers for the best opportunities possible, seeing the high school diploma as their access to better

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