The History of Education
Quarterly's
Review of
Market Education
by Catherine A. Lugg
Winter
1999, volume 39, number 4, pp. 493-95
Permission to reprint this review in its entirety has been requested but not yet granted, and so the following brief excerpts are presented under "fair use" rules.
The author's response is available in full.
"Written by an individual committed to disestablishing 'government schools,' this is neither a nuanced nor balanced tome. Rather it is a quasi-scholarly treatise designed to justify the author's pet theory...
"There are numerous problems with this book. The most basic is that the author employs the 'fallacy of presentism,' or the notion that one can plumb history for juicy examples to support a present-day policy idea, cheerfully pruning away any inconvenient facts that might muddy, conflate, or contradict one's cherished notions....
"[Coulson] fails to mention that many children were educated at home, and that many of their teachers were slaves. This is a particularly galling omission as one of Coulson's own sources, H. I. Marrou, discussed the importance of slave tutors to Athenian education in A History of Education in Antiquity.*
"The extensive endnotes also illuminate the author's agenda. Respected histories... appear along with the most incendiary and propagandistic screeds (a book published in 1968 by Christian Crusade Publications regarding the evils of the National Education Association is this reviewer's favorite).
"It is painfully apparent that the author has taken a buffet-style approach to history. He slops tasty tidbits of bona fide research onto his plate, only to slather these morsels with 'magic mushroom' sauces of propaganda.
"While this reviewer acknowledges that United States public education has many problems, they are not as systemic or as egregious as those contained within this work."
*Editor's note: This is the title of a later English translation. Market Education cites the original French text.
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