National policy for higher education in the United States and England is examined with respect to provision of highly qualified manpower. The context is set by study of the different environments within which American and English higher education take place. The background is amplified into a review of literature on manpower, government and higher education. Four agencies concerned with manpower policies were selected in two centers of national government, Washington, D.C. and London. Each was analyzed in terms of the contribution made to decision making and policy formulation. American and British approaches to national agencies, and theoretical implications for educational planning. Findings emphasize the importance of provision of trained manpower through higher education to the economy, identify shortages of mechanisms to incorporate study of common problems, and pinpoint the need for intellectual frameworks for analysis. Stimulating flexibility of response to changing labor market demands is delineated national center by the other would contribute to greater understanding of the interactions between manpower, higher education and government.

This thesis is a critical examination of the history of philosophies governing public education in the United States. The first half, chapters one through six, outlines American conceptions of the role of the school in relation to the state and to democracy. The second half is an account of critical progressive philosophies that have challenged the American status-quo since the independence. The main argument that I propose here is that the creation of an education system in America has followed the philosophies of federalism and private democracy. These philosophies are economically centered and define the citizen in economic terms. Progressive educators have long questioned this definition and seek to redefine citizenship to describe participatory democracy, and communication based on experience and an ethic of care.

In the late 1970's and 1980's, education issues formed a pivotal part of the American religious conservative agenda. The issues of school prayer, textbook content and the teaching of evolution in particular inspired lively debate and committed activism on the part of conservative Protestant leaders and activists. Confronting the behemoth of secular humanism, these leaders sought to win converts and to foment action in the converted through two separate modes of rhetoric: the emotional, which used impassioned arguments, and the intellectual, a more phlegmatic approach used to achieve political ends. Finding their roots in the 1920's, conservative Protestants have placed paramount importance on education issues throughout American history, believing that the United States is a fundamentally Christian nation, founded on a normative Protestant world view, and that American children should be taught according to these principles.

Bibliography: pages 103-109. / This document suggests and then illustrates a neglect in the study of American civil religious ritual. It argues that a primary carrier for American civil religion has been the public school system and that one vehicle used in the task of perpetuating the American identity has been the civil religious ritual of saying the Pledge of Allegiance which most American school children routinely perform at the start of each school day. The methodological approach used in this study of the Pledge ritual is a process analysis formulated by Ronald Grimes which combines the concern of sociology with that of history. Three key questions are dealt with: the process of change (a historical study); the social process effecting the ritual (this centers on the legal conflicts) and the processes which the ritual affect (this concentrates on grassroots responses to the ritual and the power, positive or negative, which it generates. The negative power behind the ritual is a dynamic force which has left its mark in the legislature of the country and in the attitude of the adult population towards the Pledge of Allegiance. This paper identifies and explains four motivators which underlie much of the ritual processing, namely, consensus, conflict, crisis and control. It concludes that the Pledge of Allegiance ritual is a dynamic force which reflects the growth and development of the civil-religious dimension of the American nation.

This study compiles a series of cases and controversies in American education, from the popularization of public education in the mid-1800's to the present, and then reviews them to determine scholarly political aspects, common themes, and trends. It then applies the identified themes to a model of “the school as a responsive political system” fashioned after David Easton's "Dynamic Response Model of a Political System” to demonstrate the operative nature of the themes. The paper reviews the plight of Negro education in Alabama after the Civil War until 1901. It discusses accommodation in the realm of education as the United States began its massive move toward industrialization and the corresponding move toward child-centered education. It discusses controversies in the reform era of the 1920's and the turmoil to the educational system in the cold war period after World War II. It looks at cases involving sectarian to non-sectarian education of the 1800's and the anguish of disappointed educators with the trends of public education and the Progressive Education Association in the Great Depression period. Finally, the paper reviews cases involving charges of indoctrination against public schools, recent controversies (since 1954) in integration and segregation, and cases involving modern educational alternatives. The paper identifies three themes consistently present in educational controversy: 1) the desire of the people to have all children successfully master the basic fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic, 2) the desire of the people to have the schools emphasize moral and spiritual values which are similar to their own, and 3) the opposition of the people to what was believed by them to be an attempt by the school to foster some dimly defined kind of socialistic theory which would replace individualism with group goals and competition with cooperation. The paper then analyzes the cases and situations with respect to the identified themes. The paper uses the framework developed by David Easton to construct a simple framework from which to view the three identified themes. It shows the three themes to be the true demands behind a variety of issues which create controversy in education. Briefly, the paper then reviews the adapt ion of the educational system to the demands. Finally, the paper concludes that lithe school" will persist as a viable political system if it can accurately analyze the basic nature of the issues confronting it, in terms of the three identified themes.

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One of the most important administrative problems in education today is how equitably to finance the school system of a state, since frequently the question of insufficient revenue and disparity between school divisions and states reflects a larger societal problem of commitment to public education. The proposal to restructure, if not refound the present educational system as a quasi~ public marketing entity using educational vouchers now challenges the time- honored common school ideal. This study provides a philosophical rationale for the American common school to aid legislators, jurists, and policymakers in interpreting key terms in the educational provisions of state constitutions. It assumes that the school financing policies of a nation reflect the value choices of a people as well as their priorities in the allocation of resources. The terms selected for analysis: "common," "system," "uniform," and "efficient," are pregnant with meaning in the context of education. Defined etymologically and philosophically, they are "terms of art" because they suggest ethical standards for a common school system. In the process of defining each term, the study examines the intellectual roots of the American common school, an institution its founders believed could unite the nation and ensure the common good. The present movement to privatize public systems, however, reflects a paradigm of laissez-faire individualism that encourages private self interest and a divisive pluralism in contrast with an older, more egalitarian tradition of classical republicanism which has shaped the common school ideal. The phrase "common good," associated with the public interest, is a rubric used to define "common" and other related root terms such as "commonality," "commonwealth," and "virtue." It defines "system" as an aspect of polity and suggests that the terms "efficient" and "uniform" have moral implications for school systems that have a public purpose of effecting a virtuous and enlightened citizenry for the preservation of a republic. This multidisciplinary investigation emphasizes the duty of the state to educate in the republican, civic humanist tradition. It thus serves as a guide to policymakers required to make complex school finance decisions that will ensure equity and equality of educational opportunity for all citizens in every state throughout the commonwealth. / Ph. D.

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In what is historically a brief number of years, the life and times of John F. Kennedy have taken on legendary proportions. His presidency began with something less than a mandate from the American people, but he brought to the White House an inspiration and a style that offered great promises of things to come.