Giới thiệu
This volume explores the ongoing debates about what constitutes the common good in American public education, assessing the current state of long-standing tensions between shared purposes and individual interests in schooling. Recent reform proposals have called for government-funded vouchers to send children to private schools, the creation of independent charter schools, the contracting of schools to private entrepreneurs, and the participation of the business community in promoting new information technologies. Critics ask, if there is a shared national purpose for education, can it be oriented only toward enhancing the country’s economic success? Is everything public for sale? Are individual interests overwhelming the common good that the founders of tax-supported public schools so fervently sought? The essays in this book address these and similar questions. All return, in one way or another, to the central issue of the tension between the common good and the utilitarian interests that individuals seek.