Blaming Teachers: Professionalization Policies and the Failure of Reform in American History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. 264 pp

ABSTRACT

In the book's first chapter, Pawlewicz shows that anxiety about the state of New York City schools in the nineteenth century led to “professional” reforms municipal partnerships in teacher preparation, new hiring standards and certification, and teacher testing. [...]protections against discrimination based on marital status and motherhood—protections that teachers expected from tenure—only emerged because teachers fought for them in the courts. [...]gendered assumptions and the financial pressure of the Depression led institutions of higher education—even elite universities like Columbia and New York University—to prioritize applied learning rather than the special knowledge that might have established teachers as classroom authorities.