Dare the School Build a New Social Order?

George S. Counts was a major figure in American education for almost fifty years. Republication of this early (1932) work draws special attention to Counts' s role as a social and political activist. Three particular themes make the book noteworthy because of their importance in Counts' s plan for change as well as for their continuing contem-porary importance: (1) Counts' s crit-icism of child-centered progressives; (2) the role Counts assigns to teachers in achieving educational and social re-form; and (3) Counts' s idea for the re-form of the American economy.