In his most recent book, In the Shadow of Authoritarianism: American Education in the Twentieth Century, Thomas Fallace's focus is on the thinking of scholars in education. Fallace's earlier books offered a close reexamination of the thinking and writing of John Dewey and other progressive educators on the subject of race, breaking new and somewhat controversial ground in the process. This book covers comparably well-worn terrain, yet offers a new angle of vision and fresh framing.
Fallace's book explores the meaning of “democratic education” by use of a clever cliché, arguing that educational rhetoric during the twentieth century fell into two main camps, with pedagogically progressive educators such as Dewey and Jerome Bruner focusing on “how to think,” and traditionalists such as Arthur Bestor, Robert M. Hutchins, and Diane Ravitch emphasizing “what to think.” An emphasis on “how to think, not what to think” was a common rhetorical trope among progressive-leaning educators from the mid-twentieth century forward. Though the cliché sort of works as a literary device, both camps include “what” and “how” with different emphases. For progressives writ large, the “what” is forward looking, emphasizing a reflective process that asks deep questions about American institutions and culture. In some cases, among progressives, rhetoric advocating a reflective and interactive approach to learning was more rhetoric than actual classroom practice. For traditionalists, the “what” is more conservative, rooted in traditional patriotic citizenship honoring elders, traditions, and the wisdom of our societal institutions. Fallace addresses these nuances to some extent, and the framing works fairly well, even though it seems like he's stretching his sources and the historical record at times to make the past fit his framing.
In the Shadow of Authoritarianism is an interesting book with an engaging thesis and penetrating analysis—a different window on topics that historians have covered thoroughly. Schooling in the United States has developed in the shadow of multiple influences, watershed events, personalities, organizations, institutions, and ideologies. It seems at times that schools are an institution blowing in the wind. Schools are subject to frequent changes in rhetoric but also tend to operate in a manner consistent with the relatively constant fundamentals of classroom practice (teacher talk, textbooks) and organizational structure (the graded school). The rhetoric of school history resembles a parade of fads, bandwagons, trends, and fashions, rising and falling, “full of sound and fury (perhaps) signifying nothing.” In a section on the “rhetoric and reality of school practice,” Fallace admits it is “hard to get a handle on the classroom realities” and cites a study which found “only superficial change” over time (p. 122). He acknowledges this dilemma, but at certain junctures seems to overestimate the influence of rhetoric on practice.
Though Fallace's thesis is overstated, he thoughtfully contextualizes the ever-changing rhetoric of schooling, making the book an interesting read. Chapters include several important episodes in American educational history: Prussian influence on education—teaching “what to think”; the democratic influence of Dewey—teaching “how to think”; propaganda anxieties; rhetorical responses to collectivism and dictatorship; science and democracy; cold war, mental hygiene, life-adjustment, and brainwashing; Sputnik and the structure of the disciplines; the affective revolution; and the return to “what to think.”
Fallace posits Dewey as a democratic hero of sorts, rejecting the authoritarian Prussian model of education and the racist and xenophobic policies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prussian ideas represented a constellation of values that many Americans considered “antithetical to democratic life: aristocratic rule, forced assimilation, schools segregated by class, a curriculum aimed toward subservience to the state, student passivity, a centralized, top-down bureaucracy, and teaching students what to think” (p. 23). In the rhetoric of education, Prussian schools became a “dialectical tool against which to define American education,” and Dewey's Democracy and Education (1916) “the most articulate example of what democratic education could and should be” (p. 23).
However, in closing his chapter on the Prussian influence and burnishing his thesis, Fallace writes, “Authoritarian regimes such as Germany filled the heads of their students with predetermined answers; in contrast, democratic regimes such as the United States taught their students to reach their own conclusions” (p. 23). Here, and elsewhere, Fallace overstates his thesis. While the rhetoric of Dewey, and perhaps most Americans, may have encouraged students to “reach their own conclusions,” the weight of teacher, textbook, and American culture encouraged students to reach predetermined answers—that American culture and government is “democratic,” the one best system, despite its flaws. This contrast, between the Prussian model and Dewey, between “what to think” and “how to think,” runs throughout the book, as does the tendency for overstatement.
On “teaching how to think”—the goal of democratic education—Fallace astutely describes the reflective, issues-centered works created by leading educational theorists such as Alan Griffin, Maurice Hunt and Lawrence Metcalf, and Donald Oliver and James Shaver as a “golden age” of theory and research on teaching “how to think” (p. 97). He argues that they built their work on Dewey's How We Think but depoliticized Dewey. Fallace clearly seems to admire these works and the democratic educational project as a whole.
On Bruner and Joseph Schwab's “structure of the disciplines” approach, Fallace suggests they developed a refined version of Dewey's How We Think. He recounts critiques from social studies theorists who argued that social studies and the social science disciplines had “different purposes” (pp. 133–134) and charged the reform was “scholacentric” or “a fad” (p. 134). He depicts the reform ending in “domestic turmoil” amid growing interest in moral education during the 1970s, leading to a “shopping mall high school” and a “disjointed and disparate curriculum” (p. 145). Others have cast this tumultuous era of freedom and experimentation in a more positive light.
Fallace describes the late 1970s as a period in which schools began to turn back to basics and focused again on “what” rather than “how to think.” He cites traditionalists’ arguments that “the state should be in the business of prescribing what facts, ideas, texts, and skills every student ought to know”—a core knowledge approach—which Fallace seems to support, combined with teaching focused on how to think using disciplinary inquiry skills. Fallace cites 1983 as a turning point and argues that debate on “what” versus “how” more or less ended with publication of A Nation at Risk, the Reagan era report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Though providing little depth, he argues perceptively that democratic education was marginalized after 1983, “diverted and subsumed” in “college and career,” with schools serving the purpose of “personal economic advancement” rather than being part of a “national civic project.” Though it may never have permeated the curriculum, there is little doubt that in the age of systemic reform we have witnessed the marginalization of civic education “in the shadow” of corporate domination.
The book does not include a conclusion, a customary space for discussing a book's thesis, arguments, and evidence. Though drawn from a mix of primary and secondary sources, superficial treatment of some topics could be strengthened with archival sources. Despite these limitations, this is a thoughtful, clearly written work that historians of education may enjoy reading. Though it falls short of creating a substantial new interpretation, Fallace's book offers an interesting reflection upon the history of ideas from twentieth-century education.
