The Post-Millennium Blues

By Maurice R. Bérubé

As the last millennium ended, many reputable scholars had dismissed their fields of inquiry as having reached their end. Notices went out that it was "the end of art," "the end of science," and "the end of history." Many knowledgeable—and unknowledgeable—critics simply ignored the messages of these Cassandras.

I am not so sure that we have not also reached "the end of education." There are many signs that we have accumulated enough knowledge about teaching and learning that we have little to look forward to that is truly new and mind- sweeping in educational research.

I came to that conclusion a few years back, when I finished a book I was writing at the time, American School Reform: Progressive, Equity, and Excellence Movements, 1883-1993 (Greenwood, 1994). It seemed to me, looking over the history of American education, that there were three great school reform movements, and that there was unlikely to be another. There would be innovation, yes, but nothing approaching the grand scale of...