Chapter 8: Education and the Culture of Schools

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” – attributed to Abraham Lincoln

Every nation writes its future in the classroom. The question of what to teach the young has never been settled without a fight, and that fight, more than any other in American life, is the one where the combatants believe – with justification – that losing means losing everything. This is the story of that fight: where it came from, who is waging it, and whether it can be survived without tearing the country apart.