Collectivists and Free Marketeers: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Reform

• In Event: Roundtable Session 124
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Reform and Free Markets

Abstract

Collectivists and Freemarketeers: Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Reform

In this paper, we use historical conclusions about social reconstructionism to examine contemporary free market educational reforms. Three questions that were significantly addressed by the social reconstructionists create a framework through which we investigated similarities and differences between them and free market reformers. We found that the inability of social reconstructionists to enact their reforms and free-market reformers’ success may be attributable to the better match between contemporary reformers’ beliefs and those of the majority of Americans.

Authors

• Mary Rose McCarthy, Pace University

• Sonia E. Murrow, Brooklyn College - CUNY