| Abstract: | Both scholarly and popular publications in the United States have always contained critical comments about schools and education, but lately what is usually a trickle has become a raging torrent. Each professional journal and edition of the daily paper or weekly news magazine contains stories about the “great crisis” in American education and the perceived gap that exists between what children and adolescents know and what adults think they should know to become useful and productive citizens in the 21st century. This great concern over what is thought to be a “quality” education has ushered in one of the most intense and long-lasting reform movements in the history of our educational system (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; Cremin, 1989). |
