Overview

The American Teacher: A History is, as the title makes clear, a history of teachers in the United States. Supported by hundreds of research studies done over the years as reported in scholarly journals, the book fills a niche in the history of education, sociology, gender studies, and the United States as a whole. K-12 teachers and, to a lesser extent, college/university teachers, are discussed in the work which travels through the past century. Told chronologically and divided into ten decades, The American Teacher sheds light on the important role that teachers have played in this country over the last one hundred years. The subject is parsed through the voices of educators, intellectuals, and journalists who have weighed in on its many different dimensions from the 1920s right up to today. The American teacher is a key site of race, gender, and class, we learn from a survey of its history, revealing some of the tensions embedded in our constructed social divisions. Controversy has always surrounded teachers in the United States, making them a fascinating subject to explore in depth. The “schoolteacher” has long served as a principal player in American culture, making The American Teacher a kind of character study that distinguishes fact from fiction. Rather than a research study itself, the work draws on the most important scholarship that has been completed over the years. The work is a big, sweeping picture of the history of American teachers that is designed to complement more academic books that take a more in-depth analysis of unique topics with original research. And in place of focusing on a particular topic, the book examines the threads that have connected issues such as gender and economic status over time. In short, The American Teacher is a synthetic, narrative-driven study that brings together in one place the essential research in the field. And like any good history, the book shows how mining the stuff of everyday life serves as the richest way to learn more about a group of people at a particular time and in a particular place.

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9781538189115

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Reviews

In this overview of teachers in the U.S. over the past century, Samuel relies on academic journal articles and more popular fare from the Saturday Evening Post and Time magazine to present a decade-by-decade slog of unrelenting teacher shortages, examples of poorly prepared instructors, understaffed and underfunded programs, and substandard levels of achievement. ... Samuel's tone becomes more hopeful as he considers the early 1990s federal educational reforms and creation of national teaching standards before he laments that these seemingly progressive measures resulted in greater reliance on standardized test scores and teachers being shut out of decision-making processes. The book ends with Samuel wondering whether technological advancements will eliminate the need for teachers at all. Samuel, an independent scholar of American studies, makes clear from jump that this book is not a research study. Instead, it is an examination of the role of U.S. teachers over the last century. Divided into 10 chapters (one for each decade, starting with the 1920s), the book argues that the evolution of the teaching profession is inexorably tied to historical events and the social mores of the United States. The evolving roles of women and teachers of color, for instance, can be traced through their treatment by school boards, courts, and communities. Another focus is the historical (and ongoing) effort to separate proficient teachers from their less-successful counterparts. To bridge the gap, sometimes there's teacher training; rarely are there increased salaries for the most skilled teachers. Even into the 2010s, many successful teachers were forced to supplement their meager income with side gigs. Samuel also probes the tension that arises in the United States' disparate societal understandings of what a teacher does: some see the task of teachers as producing critical thinkers, while others want educators to produce students who work within the status quo. An in-depth look at a profession that is alternately valued and reviled but is consistently a microcosm of society.

"Samuel, an independent scholar of American studies, makes clear from jump that this book is not a research study. Instead, it is an examination of the role of U.S. teachers over the last century. Divided into 10 chapters (one for each decade, starting with the 1920s), the book argues that the evolution of the teaching profession is inexorably tied to historical events and the social mores of the United States. The evolving roles of women and teachers of color, for instance, can be traced through their treatment by school boards, courts, and communities. Another focus is the historical (and ongoing) effort to separate proficient teachers from their less-successful counterparts. To bridge the gap, sometimes there's teacher training; rarely are there increased salaries for the most skilled teachers. Even into the 2010s, many successful teachers were forced to supplement their meager income with side gigs. Samuel also probes the tension that arises in the United States' disparate societal understandings of what a teacher does: some see the task of teachers as producing critical thinkers, while others want educators to produce students who work within the status quo. An in-depth look at a profession that is alternately valued and reviled but is consistently a microcosm of society. -- ""Library Journal"""

Author Information

Lawrence R. Samuel is a Miami-based independent scholar who holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an MA in English from the University of Minnesota, an MBA in Marketing from the University of Georgia, and was a Smithsonian Institution Fellow. Larry blogs for Psychologytoday.com, where he has received over a million hits, and is often quoted in the media.

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