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Drawing connections between Jonathon Kozol’s arguments about failing federal education goals and the earlier reform efforts of George S. Counts and Ivan Illich, it traces common patterns of ambition, resistance, and partial failure. Counts’ progressive education career is analyzed alongside his attraction to Soviet organizational education as a model for social transformation.",{"@graph":69,"@context":121},[70,84,104],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/affecting-social-change-the-struggle-for-educators-to-transform-society/603284/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":98,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":99,"interactionStatistic":100},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/affecting-social-change-the-struggle-for-educators-to-transform-society/603284.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"moss~","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":101,"interactionType":102,"userInteractionCount":4},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":103},"ViewAction",{"@type":105,"mainEntity":106},"FAQPage",[107,113,117],{"name":108,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":110},"How does Jonathon Kozol connect education policy to social harm?","Question",{"text":111,"@type":112},"Kozol argues that unrealistic federal goals damage districts and schools and that policies are designed to humiliate rather than help children. He also describes how mobilizing teachers can support political action and racial integration.","Answer",{"name":114,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":115},"Why is George S. Counts discussed as a key, yet unsuccessful, reformer?",{"text":116,"@type":112},"Counts is portrayed as a major figure in progressive education whose efforts to reshape school policy ultimately faced historical resistance. His career highlights both the ambition for systemic change and the difficulties in sustaining it.",{"name":118,"@type":109,"acceptedAnswer":119},"What role does Soviet education play in Counts’ thinking?",{"text":120,"@type":112},"Counts is described as being drawn to the Soviet model’s organized, centralized approach to cultural transformation. This attraction fuels his advocacy for a broader social order and for schools to drive nonviolent change.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":123,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":125,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":127,"site_id":62},603284,1792096022,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":130},{"doc_id":127,"user_id":131,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":132,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":133,"file_id":134,"file_url":135,"file_type":136,"file_size":137,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":52,"language":138,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":139,"faqs":140,"seo_title":141,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":128,"read_time":142},962090895452,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd","WilliamC. Sewell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Teaching and Leadership ofthe School of Education atthe University ofKansas, Lawrence, Kansas.  \nAffecting Social Change: The Struggle for Educators To Transform Society  \nBy William C. Sewell  \nSince he first chronicled the plight of schools and the painful struggle to provide quality education forchildren of all backgrounds and abilities in Death atan Early Age (1967), Jonathon Kozol has been a strong and popular advocate for children. In his recent work, The Shame of the Nation (2005), Kozol contends that the unrealistic goals set by policies, such as No Child Left Behind, are breaking school districts, schools that have already been overburdened and have few resources to improve their situation. When addressing the problems for today’s educators, Kozol points out that current federal efforts are designed “not to benefit children but to humiliate the public enterprise” (as cited in Jehlen, 2006, p. 17) . Kozol has joined with teachers’unions like the National Education Association to “stave off an onslaught of misguided federal dictates” in order to “help mobilize teachers to take action politically and launch a new movement for racial integration”(Jehlen, p. 17) . Unfortunately for Kozol, history has not been kind to reformers who have attempted to wrestle control of public schools from bureaucracies that impair school quality.  \nGeorge S. Counts and Ivan Illich are the most outstanding examples of those reformers who have tried and failed to initiate substantive school policy change. Though Counts and Illich come from very different generations and very different geographical regions, their quest to enhance public education shares very similar paths. As a result, their work warrants attention by those interested in the history of education as well those interested in contemporary school policy. Highlighting their careers and failures, this essay will provide insight to those like Kozol who attempt to modify American public schools.  \nFrom the 1920sto the 1960s, GeorgeS. Counts was a major figure in progressive education. After two visits to Russian schools in the late twenties, Counts came to prominence for his promotion of a new educational system based upon ideas formulated during his travels. At first glance, Counts’zealous acclaim for the Soviet model of education would suggest that he was a communist, but the fact was that he was heavily drawn to the Soviet Union’s passionate, orderly endeavor to remedy its failed state. As Gerald Gutek (1993) notes, Counts was drawn to this model because “Soviet leaders…had correctly recognized the power of organized education as an instrument of cultural transformation”(p. 11). While the U.S. degenerated into a do-nothing Hoover-era depression, the Soviets were attempting to strengthen their nation after decades of disastrous internal and external conflict. Their 1904- 1905 war with Japan was a complete fiasco only tobe worsened by their devastating involvement in World War I. Because their leadership had utterly failed them at home and abroad, Russians repeatedly plunged into a civil war that installed Lenin and Stalin as their new leaders in 1917.  \nWhile revolution transformed the Soviet Union, U.S. leaders seemed unwilling to remedy their own nation’s economic and social woes. Like other educators around him, Counts began looking for alternatives totheU.S. model. States Gutek,“While his own country seemed unable to come to grips with the Depression, the Soviet[s] were making great strides forward because of their coordination and centralized planning”(p. 11). In his acclaimed pamphlet, Dare the School Build a New Social Order (1932), Counts eloquently makes a case for a radical rethinking of social organizations:  \nWe are moved by no great faiths; we are touched by no great passions. We can view a world order rushing rapidly towards collapse with no more concern than the outcome of a horserace; we can see injustice, ","cbCaifMzNjM4Y5JB","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifMzNjM4Y5JB","pdf",33630,"English","# Background and advocacy\n## Kozol’s critique of federal education goals\n## Reformers and the challenge of policy change\n# George S. Counts and progressive education\n## Soviet influences and organizational schooling\n## Counts’ proposals for social rethinking\n## Education as nonviolent democratic change\n# Teacher agency and progressive education tensions","[{\"question\":\"How does Jonathon Kozol connect education policy to social harm?\",\"answer\":\"Kozol argues that unrealistic federal goals damage districts and schools and that policies are designed to humiliate rather than help children. He also describes how mobilizing teachers can support political action and racial integration.\"},{\"question\":\"Why is George S. Counts discussed as a key, yet unsuccessful, reformer?\",\"answer\":\"Counts is portrayed as a major figure in progressive education whose efforts to reshape school policy ultimately faced historical resistance. His career highlights both the ambition for systemic change and the difficulties in sustaining it.\"},{\"question\":\"What role does Soviet education play in Counts’ thinking?\",\"answer\":\"Counts is described as being drawn to the Soviet model’s organized, centralized approach to cultural transformation. This attraction fuels his advocacy for a broader social order and for schools to drive nonviolent change.\"}]","Affecting Social Change - The Struggle for Educators To Transform Society | PDF",25]