“One reason schools have been able to absorb outside demands for change is that they have been steadily expanding during most of their history and could reform by accretion.  This kind of incrementalism has made it possible to smother conflict by acquiesence-to say, yes we’ll have that too.”

David Tyack and Elizabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue (NY: Basic, 1982.)   

 

“The development of this historical field (the history of American education) took place, consequently, in a special atmosphere of professional purpose. It grew in almost total isolation from the major influences and shaping minds of twentieth century historiography; and its isolation proved to be self-intensifying: the more parochial the subject became, the less capable it was of attracting the kind of scholars who could it give it broad relevance and bring it back into the public domain. It soon displayed the exaggeration of weakness and extravagance of emphasis that are the typical results of sustained inbreeding.”
Bernard Bailyn. Education in the Forming of American Society (NY: Norton, 1960.) pp.8-9.