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Chapter 17
The Politics of Schooling
Each year the child is coming to belong more to the State and less and less to
the parent.
— Ellwood P. Cubberley, Conceptions of Education (1909)
It was natural businessmen should devote themselves to something besides
business; that they should seek to influence the enactment and administration
of laws, national and international, and that they should try to control
education.
— Max Otto, Science and the Moral Life (1949)
Most people don’t know who controls American education because little
attention has been given the question by either educators or the public. Also
because the question is not easily or neatly answered.
— James D. Koerner, Who Controls American Education (1968)
Three Holes In My Floor
In October 1990, three round holes the size of silver dollars appeared in the floor of my classroom
at Booker T. Washington Junior High between West 107th and 108th streets in Spanish Harlem,
about twelve blocks from Columbia Teachers College. My room was on the third floor and the
holes went through to the second floor room beneath. In unguarded moments, those holes proved
an irresistible lure to my students, who dropped spitballs, food, and ball bearings down on the
heads of helpless children below without warning. The screams of outrage were appalling. So
pragmatically, without thinking much about it, I closed off the holes with a large flat of plywood
and dutifully sent a note to the school custodian asking for professional assistance.
The next day when I reported to work my makeshift closure was gone, the holes were open, and I
found a warning against "unauthorized repairs" in my mailbox. That day three different teachers
used the room with the holes. During each occupancy various objects plummeted through the
floor to the consternation of occupants in the space below. In one particularly offensive assault,
human waste was retrieved from the toilet, fashioned into a missile, and dropped on a shrieking
victim. All the while, the attacking classroom exploded in cackles of laughter, I was later told.
On the third day of these aerial assaults, the building principal appeared at my door demanding the
bombardment cease at once. I pointed out that I had been forbidden to close off the holes, that
many other teachers used the room in my absence, that the school provided no sanctions for
student aggressors, and that it was impossible to teach a class of thirty-five kids and still keep
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