Going through the Schoolhouse Door: The American Public School as a Political Community in the Twentieth Century

The three historical episodes developed here illuminate some of the dimensions of the twentieth century public school as a political community in which civic association was first experienced. The teaching life of Septima Clark in legally segregated South Carolina demonstrates how a teacher created a counter polity in her classrooms; Marcus Foster’s stewardship of a high school in inner city Philadelphia in the late sixties illustrates the role of a principal in the reconstruction of a school’s polity; the pages of the Topeka High World reveal how the political community of a school addressed key challenges of the cold war years, including desegregation. As we make plans for “reinventing” the public school, we need to think carefully about how these will influence the ability of public schools to serve as the “commons” of childhood and youth.