Liberal education’s self-developmental promise was never actually attempted

Evidence

Thus there are some grounds for the opinion that the modern liberal view of the self-developmental capacities of schooling has not been falsified by recent U.S. experience; rather, it has never been tried. A historian of Progressivism in U.S. education might well echo Gandhi’s assessment of Western civilization: “It would be a good idea.” — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 540

Thus there are some grounds for the opinion that the modern liberal view of the self-developmental capacities of schooling has not been falsified by recent U.S. experience; rather, it has never been tried. A historian of Progressivism in U.S. education might well echo Gandhi’s assessment of Western civilization: “It would be a good idea.” — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 540

Categorization

• SHARE: The Gandhi closing line is a tidy quotable worth sending to a friend writing about education reform futility.
• CANDY: Gandhi’s quip that Western civilization ‘would be a good idea’ is a light, quotable zinger that undercuts a whole reformist tradition in one line.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 540
• XREF: connects to: Schooling as social panacea persisted from Carnegie to Johnson. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 282