Success and failure in educational reform: Are there historical “lessons”?

Abstract

Even early in this century, when enthusiasm for reform was at its height and reputations were being made by proposals of all sorts to modify and in many instances replace common practice in education, there already existed pale cast of pessimism as to whether the proposed innovative practices would actually make their way into schools and, if they did, whether they would endure. In 1922, for example, W. W. Charters (1922), one of the leading educational reformers of the 20th century and man who practically set the style for contemporary studies of curriculum, referred to the history of education as a chronicle of fads. Since then, the terms fads and frills and pendulum swings have become commonplace characterizations of the efforts to reform school practice. While present efforts to improve school practice continue unabated and at time when we hear calls from every side about the mediocrity of American schooling, there remains not just pessimism but almost cynicism about the chances for success in changing pedagogical practice. Two of the nagging questions, then, are whether this pessimism about educational reform is warranted and, if it is, why are at least some common educational practices so resistant to change. Beyond those questions is the related phenomenon of pendulum swings and whether and in what sense that rather cynical view of educational reform may or may not have any substance. Finally, there is the question of whether there are any lessons to be derived from previous