Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy

Abstract

Discourse concerning American public education is increasingly fraught and complex. Against this backdrop, David Berliner and Carl Hermanns have entered an edited volume of essays into the fray – Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy – with a particular focus on the contributions of Horace Mann as a visionary of an education system that could serve and sustain American democracy. Accordingly, a conversation about American education can and should address what democracy actually means and how it can be nurtured and strengthened. This volume facilitates such a conversation, bringing together many of the nation’s most respected educators and scholars to reflect on how and why to “uphold, defend, and perfect the critical and transformative role of public education that Mann envisioned, and for which he advocated” (p. 2).