S.O.S.: Sustain Our Schools

In so framing her book's discussion that it reaches this conclusion, Ms. Graham touches upon one of the mainstream issues of American education, an issue that began with the expressed opinions of Thomas Jefferson to his fellow Founding Fathers and continue to be argued to this day: that is, the basic concept of whether or not there should be public education at all.

Most certainly, Graham's argument for business involvement rests upon the assumption that everyone in the United States has the right to an education; she was, after all, the director of the National Institute of Education during two years of the Carter Administration. Graham's thesis begins with disillusionment in the status quo, citing the need for educational reform and four reasons for the dire contemporary situation:

1) Fundamental changes in attitude and action by many segments of American soc

. . .
owed by twenty state secondary schools, tuition-free, for poor boys exhibiting a talent for learning (Rippa). The bill was defeated: Virginians were not prepared to forego their private, secular schools - nor were they convinced that universal education (girls, the poor) was a desirable social change. From the very beginning in American public policy, then, there have been two major battlegrounds over education - the concept of universal education per se, and secular/nonsecular schooling - summarized in the public vs. private school issue. Public education advocate Horace Mann faced the same resistance as Jefferson when he assumed the position of first Secretary to the newly-formed State Board of Education in Massachusetts in 1837. Massachusetts, a smaller, more urbanized state than the Virginia of sixty years earlier, fiercely resisted Mann's campaign for universal, nonsectarian public education. In the twelve years of Mann's tenure in office, the battle lines were clearly drawn. Opponents of public schooling were appalled at the suggestion of an education that did not emphasize specific religious leanings; despite Mann's personal emphasis on the moral value of education, he was reviled as an atheist by the American Sunday
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Notes Virginia, Administration Graham's, Regarding Mann's, Ronald Reagan, School Society, Education Massachusetts, Laboratory School, Albjerg Graham, Republican Party, Unlike Jefferson, public education, public schooling, public school, sustain schools, school system, sos sustain schools, sos sustain, universal nonsectarian public, education free, york teachers, thomas jefferson, private school, public school system, public education graham's, teachers college press,
Approximate Word count = 1551
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)