A School by Every Other Name: Culture X and Public Education

In A School By Every Other Name Ebert and Studebaker suggest that the fundamental problem facing public education is that education is fundamentally an institution. The failure of school reform efforts to elevate public education in the United States to a pre-eminent position is due to the myth of educational reform, the mistaken belief that substantive changes actually occur. Yet how different is education today than it was 50, 100, even 200 years ago? Reform has become a part of the survival mechanism that keeps the institution in business. A School By Every Other Name calls for a revolution that would reconceptualize the institution of education. That effort begins with overcoming our national cultural identity crisis. Rather than prescribing what must be done, A School By Every Other Name presents poignant perspectives and background and then invites the reader to begin answering the questions that could lead to building a new institution of education. Not just a book about education, A School By Every Other Name is a workbook for beginning the dialogue toward systemic change in American schools.