New Ways of Seeing: A Response to Tyack

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Theories of Educational Histories

Abstract

In this essay the author describes the rise of compulsory schooling in the United States by responding to a seminal essay written by the legendary education historian, David Tyack. After the two stages of compulsory schooling (symbolic and bureaucratic) and five explanatory models (classical liberalism, ethnocultural conflict, organizational theory, human capital theory, and Marxian) are introduced and reviewed, the carceral state and racial capitalism theoretical frameworks are defined and applied. The essay ends by noting blind spots in the carceral state and racial capitalist framings while recalling the central message of Tyack’s observation.

Author

• Max Jacobs, Rutgers University