Opening Pandora's Locker: Federalizing the Education Gospel, 1945–2010

• In Event: 64.039 - Federal Policies and Educational Borders: Teachers, Standards, and Nations at Risk

Abstract

This paper explores contingency in the underlying national discourse around education as education politics became federalized in the six decades after World War Two. Three major forces catapulted education onto the national stage in the immediate post-WW 2 era: the mass spread of broadcast culture, especially television; the civil rights movement; and the Cold War. The federalizing of education in essence opened a “Pandora’s locker,” letting politicians and others hope that schools could solve the nation’s greatest challenges. But neither that federalization nor the hopeful assumptions of policymakers were inevitable. Instead, the path of federal education politics have been deeply contingent on complex, multilevel dynamics of education discourse.

Authors

• Sherman Dorn, Arizona State University

• Wooyeong Kim, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College Arizona State University