UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Conscience, Community, and the Re-Constitution of American Schooling

Book Jacket: "Short Route to Chaos" by S. Arons

Stephen Arons

A forcefully argued critique of American public education

According to Stephen Arons, American public schooling has fallen on hard times. It is wracked by polarizing political conflict, analyzed nearly to death by trend-driven reports, undermined by taxpayer revolts, abandoned in the inner cities, and regulated, litigated, and overgoverned at every level. Arons documents these assertions with numerous examples and takes as his primary case in point the Goals 2000 legislation which was fashioned by the Bush and Clinton administrations to create national and state curriculum standards for grades K- 12.

Arons uses the debate over Goals 2000 as a vehicle to examine how educational policy can affect individual liberty and cultural diversity in the nation at large. He is critical of both the "liberal" education establishment and the "conservatives" allied with the Christian Right. He argues that unless state and national governments are prevented from controlling the content of schooling, the liberty of teachers and students will be lost and quality and diversity will decline.

Yet in Arons's view, local control of schooling is not the answer—it is simply a longer road to the same chaos of cultural conflict and government intervention in education. In fact, the vast inequalities of educational opportunity based on race, wealth, and class are primarily the products of local control.

Short Route to Chaos develops a series of specific suggestions for reform based on the principle that families should be allowed to select the best schools for their children and that public funding should be allocated on a per capita basis for each child, regardless of wealth or geographic location. The author goes on to propose an education amendment to the U.S. Constitution. His book is an impassioned call for a pragmatic and populist re-constitution of American schooling—one that respects conscience, supports community, and reinvigorates the principles of constitutional democracy.

"Written with grace and verve, this book strikes at the heart of a set of issues of contemporary and enduring interest."

Tyll van Geel, University of Rochester
"These are very difficult and controversial days for American public education, and this volume powerfully argues that, as a nation, we are moving in the wrong direction."

Stephen D. Sugarman, University of California, Berkeley

Stephen Arons is professor of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Education
232 pp.
LC 96-51512
$40.00s cloth, ISBN 1-55849-077-9
$22.95t paper, ISBN 1-55849-078-7
1997
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