Gene Brown

Fred M. Hechinger

Childhood, Youth, and Society

M. Fred

Grace Hechinger

Growing up in America is a landmark book that shows the startling parallel between growing up in American and the growing up of America. Underlying this central theme is the fact that schools, from nursery to university cannot ever build a democratic society in isolation from the main currents of American life. Education emerges a America's invisible and often misunderstood frontier. Its promise, though less enticed generation after generation of children to push forward into territory that had been strange and forbidding to their parents. National politics and institutional policies are shown to have affected the educational experience of American Families. In Growing up in America the actual lives of children, parents, and teachers are brought into focus, revealing the tug-of-war between elitist privilege and egalitarian promise, the worlds of affluence and poverty, and the radically different realities confronted y the poor, the Blacks, and women. As it traces the cycles of educational reforms and politics, the book cuts through the distortions that have often resulted form the smug claims of the Establishment as well as from the anti-establishment idealogues. It shatters the legend of America as a childhood utopia. -- publisher description.

Fred M. Hechinger

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