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• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Isaac Kramnick, English Middle-class Radicalism In the Eighteenth Century
• I: I Social and Political Thought
• Community, Individuality, and Freedom
• Rousseau's Social Thought
• A Sociological History of Utilitarianism
• Spencer and Comte In American Labor Thought
• Bureaucracy In Weber & Kafka
• Bergson's Political Doctrines
• Oakeshott's Political Theory
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• Wilkes and Radical Politics
• Late Liberal Imperialism
• Kant and Reason In Politics
• II: Education, Politics, and Values
• Schools and Political Socialization
• Schooling For Imperialism
• The Political Economy of Public Schooling
• Federal Education Policy
• The Problems of Federal Education
• William James As Individualist
• Existential and Phenomenological Education
• Early Federal Educational Policy
• Education, Labor Markets, & Controlled Youth
• Government Control of Universities
• III: Economic Thought and Values
• Business and Legal History
• Schumpeter's Economic Theories
• Menger and Entrepreneurship
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• The Free Market & the Third World
• Democratic Capitalism, Justice, & Religion
• Property, Law, and Economics
• The Economic Analysis of Law Vs. Values
• IV: Foreign Policy and Ideology
• The Attractiveness of War
• Walzer On International Morality
• Eduard Bernstein and Imperialism
• Roosevelt Vs. His War Critics
• American Preconceptions of Japan
• The Marshall Plan and Russia
• V: Self-knowledge, Autonomy, and Liberty
• The Self In Political Thought
• Autonomy, Self, and Will Power
• Self-knowledge: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel
• The Egoist As a “psychopath”
• The History of Social Psychology
• Psychology, Self, and Society
• Free Will, Responsibility, and Motivation
• Free Will, Purpose, and Responsibility
• Political “groupthink” and Reality
• Personal Freedom and Autonomy
• Research Fields
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• Sociology

Federal Education Policy

Samuel Halperin

• George Washington University

The American public education system is characterized by numerous participants, decentralized decision-making and factionalism, fragmentation, and conflict. Public education is difficult to improve and lacks a national policy. This lack of a national educational policy opens up the question of the federal role in educational policy.

Federal educational policy has a number of characteristics.

• 1.Federal aid is generally aimed at various specific subgroups but channelled through educational institutions.
• 2.Many aid programs are enacted by non-educational committees of Congress. This points to the instrumental focus on education.
• 3.Policies are generally the result of response to external political/social/ economic conditions and not the result of actions by educational groups. These groups rarely anticipate these conditions nor can they mobilize support among non-educational interest groups.
• 4.The federal government (with its multiplicity of agencies, programs, and laws) plays many distinct and often conflicting roles.

The federal role has shifted often during the last twenty years. The most notable shift has been toward an activist role. All branches have engaged in this shift, prodded by outside interest groups. These initiatives are generally short-sighted with little consideration of the total educational picture. Frequent changes in policy makers aggravate this situation and tend to transfer power to those, especially in the middle management ranks who retain their positions. Education has not been the focus of partisan controversy although the Democrats have tended to be more activist and reliant on the middle ranks of the bureaucracy, while the Republicans have tended to adopt a top-down approach to policy initiatives. Research and evaluation inputs have been very limited as policy discussions are primarily financially oriented and revolved around expanding various programs.