| Introduction | 3 |
| I | The Common Schools 1835-1855 | |
| 1 | The New World and the Old | 7 |
| The children | 7 |
| The spread of indiscipline | 16 |
| Charity schools | 18 |
| 2 | The Ultimate Reform: The Common Schools | 29 |
| The reformers | 30 |
| The problem with the (unreformed) schools | 33 |
| A "common" republicanism; a "common" Protestantism | 39 |
| 3 | The Campaign for the Common Schools: The Enthusiasts, the Indifferent, and the Opposition | 44 |
| The manufacturers and the common schools | 44 |
| The workers, their organizations, and the common schools | 48 |
| The campaign for school taxes: the reformers vs. the districts | 50 |
| Who shall teach the children? | 60 |
| 4 | The Irish and the Common Schools | 66 |
| The Irish: making a living, building a community | 66 |
| Schools for Irish children | 69 |
| The reformers' response | 72 |
| 5 | The Legacy of Reform--the Ideology and the Institution | 80 |
| II | The High Schools 1895-1915 | |
| 6 | The "Youth" Problem | 87 |
| The invention of "adolescence": G. Stanley Hall | 87 |
| The "bad boys": who were they? | 89 |
| The adolescent and the law | 93 |
| Child-saving | 96 |
| The "youth" problem as a "class" problem | 98 |
| 7 | The War Against the Wards | 105 |
| The call to battle | 106 |
| Business leads the charge | 107 |
| 8 | Reforming the High Schools | 114 |
| "Youth" problems, "class" problems, and some early attempts to solve them | 115 |
| High schools and white collars | 117 |
| The high schools: a new weapon in the battle for exports and against the unions | 120 |
| Industrial schooling: for whom? | 124 |
| 9 | New Studies for New Students | 126 |
| Industrial schooling for the "plain people" | 127 |
| Differentiation: the new democracy in secondary schooling | 129 |
| The new students: what they wanted, what they got | 134 |
| Social efficiency in secondary schooling | 139 |
| 10 | Reaction, Resistance, and the Final Compromise | 146 |
| The union response | 146 |
| The "plain people's" response | 147 |
| The educators' response | 150 |
| Secondary schooling: for industrial efficiency or for democracy? | 154 |
| The final compromise: the comprehensive high school | 156 |
| III | Higher Education 1945-1970 | |
| 11 | Between the World Wars: To School or to Work? | 161 |
| High School: for whom? | 161 |
| College: for whom? | 164 |
| 12 | One Depression Cured, Another Prevented: Planning for War and Postwar | 170 |
| Fighting the war the American way | 171 |
| The G.1. Bill | 173 |
| 13 | In the "National Interest": The Private Universities in Postwar | 183 |
| From World War to Cold War: the state and the corporation | 184 |
| The R&D explosion | 186 |
| Of research and education | 189 |
| New funds and functions | 192 |
| 14 | A "Rising Tide" of Students: the Public Sector | 197 |
| Fewer "good" jobs and more job hunters | 198 |
| Postwar plans and planners: new goals for higher education | 203 |
| The "tidal wave" approaches | 205 |
| Of plans and planners | 210 |
| 15 | The "Tidal Wave" Contained--Open Admissions | 214 |
| Open admissions: for whom? | 215 |
| Open admissions: to where? and why? | 221 |
| The higher education pyramid | 230 |
| Conclusion | 239 |
| Notes | 245 |
| Bibliography | 275 |
| Index | 295 |
ISBN: 0195028929
