School Reform In A Global Society

School Reform in a Global Society is about how a silent, wealthy upper class in the United States waited until the end of the Twentieth Century to transform America into something it once was during the Age of the Robber Barons. Known today as neoliberals, this nostalgic elite, craving the return of the unregulated capitalism of the nineteenth century, see themselves as the new Victorian imperialists. Using the term globalization to mean economic colonialism, their corporate policies force Third World governments, parents and children alike to accept schooling that disregards and damages their cultures. Even in the United States they discovered they could not create their nineteenth century imperial nirvana without first forcing schools to develop an obedient working class that swore allegiance to them. This social history of schools, capitalism, colonialism and its child named globalization is about how those who crave wealth and power are willing to gamble away the lives of American youth to satisfy their dreams of past economic glory.

This far reaching text, explores the relations between global wealth and poverty, American and European elites and Third World indigenous societies, and the role schools play in the destruction of cultures. It exams how the dark underside of capitalism, called neoliberalism, is using schools to destroy an American generation and why the No Child Left Behind Act is replacing the democracy of Roosevelt and Dewey with Victorian classism.

Dr. William Segall is professor of Social Foundations in Oklahoma State University's College of Education and a professor in the University's School of International Studies. His graduate seminars in Ethiopian and Soviet educational systems are noted internationally along with his pioneering undergraduate social foundations curriculums on the role schools play in understanding international problems. Dr. Segall has also taught in Canada and was for a short time a principal of a Japanese juku preparing students for European and American university entrance examinations.