The American Private School: A Cultural History

Historian Samuel (The American Teacher) offers an ambitious but ultimately tepid study of American private schools over the past century, charting what he calls the nation’s “love-hate relationship” with private education. He begins during WWI, when private schools saw an uptick in enrollment (likely due to economic upswing) followed by a wave of accusations that they were un-American due to their exclusivity. Samuel tracks how since that point, private school advocates have attempted to prove the opposite: that private education is distinctly American becauseit offers parental choice and freedom from government regulation (which Samuel notes has led to occasional embarrassments for private schools, like being left out of a city-wide school drill staged in New York after the bombing of Pearl Harbor). He concludes that private schools are no longer the domain of the elite because of efforts made by many in recent decades to be more inclusive, but fails to persuade on that point, quoting too many secondary sources and not offering enough data. While the notion of a dedicated study of the nation’s private schools (of which there are more than 1,600) is an intriguing one that leads to some fascinating tidbits, ultimately Samuel doesn’t prove a love-hate relationship so much as that some people love private schools and some people hate them. It’s an unsatisfyingly reticent approach to a thorny issue. (Mar.)