The Power to Punish: A Social Inquiry into Coercion and Control in Urban Schools

Many informed persons may not know how and why public schools were originally established. This book describes how the origins of public schools influenced the nature of urban schooling for the next 150 years and more. It reveals the relationship between the organizational practices of urban schools and penal and military communities of the distant, pre-bureaucratic past. The focus is on the social functions schooling preformed in American society and the organizational forms that were used to carry out these functions.