Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee since 1920

Abstract

Beset by such controversies as whether they have the right to search students lockers for guns and drugs, big city schools are making adjustments unimaginable in earlier eras, when detention was still sufficient for keeping order. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is one city trying to cope with the educational challenges of the twentieth century. Seeds of Crisis examines the ways in which these challenges have affected the politics of education, the curriculum, the work of teachers and principals, and the everyday lives of students in Milwaukee. Since the problems facing urban schools are similar from city to city, a close and careful look at the historical roots and origins of the situation in Milwaukee can serve as a model for those working on solutions in other places. The contributors touch on topics from curriculum to desegregation in the Milwaukee public schools, setting the schools histories within a broader context of the changing urban scene and educational policy issues. Taken together, these essays offer an unusual perspective on the development of a major urban school system as it prepares to face the future.