Harvey Kantor, Ph.D. Professor 308G MBH, 587-7805 Harvey.Kantor@utah.edu

Research

I am a historian of education and social policy. For the past fifteen years, my primary intellectual interest has been in the history of liberal social policy, with a particular interest in the politics of educational reform in the United States in the 20th century. My research on this topic has focused on two areas: the history of work, schooling, and the vocationalization of American education and the role of the state and the development of federal educational and social policy from the New Deal to the conservative restoration in the 1980s and 1990s. What unites this work has been an effort to understand why education has come to occupy such a central place in the history of liberal social policy in the twentieth century United States and to examine the effects of these policies on the provision of equal opportunity as well as on the capacities of different groups and classes to shape the trajectory of educational policy.

My most recent research project continues to explore these questions through a local case study of the search for educational opportunity in Salt Lake City. Focusing on the class and racial divisions that surfaced in Salt Lake surrounding the school board's 1987 decision to close South High School and its subsequent effort to balance the socioeconomic and racial composition of each of the city's other high schools, this project examines the competing definitions of equal education that divided groups and classes in the city and explores how the realities of unequal power shaped the politics and organization of schooling in the city. In this way, I hope to better understand how politics and ideology have shaped the organization of schooling and the lack of equal educational opportunity for groups long marginalized by the school system.

Teaching

In my teaching, I draw on these and other themes to encourage students to explore how a historical sensibility might usefully contribute to their understanding of the role of education in American society. In addition to familiarizing students with key themes in the history of American education, in my courses I try both to raise questions about how historians think about problems, make arguments, and reach conclusions and to link past and present in order to provide a historical foundation for discussion of contemporary issues in educational reform. Through discussion and analysis of primary and secondary sources, I try in all of my classes to push students to engage with ways of seeing different than their own and to understand and deal with the reasoning behind those different views.

Selected Publications:

Books and Book chapters

Kantor, H., & Lowe, R. (in preparation). Class. race, and the politics of educational policy: From the New Deal to the Great Society and after. Mahweh, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (2000). Bureaucracy left and right: Thinking about the one best system. In Larry Cuban and Dorothy Shipps, (Eds.), Restructuring the common good in education. (pp. 130-48). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Lowe, R., & Kantor, H. (1995). Creating opportunity without upsetting the status quo: The ambiguous response to the African American educational struggle, 1950-1990. In Irwin Flaxman and Harry Passow (Eds.), National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education.

Kantor, H., & Brenzel, B. (1993). Urban education and the truly disadvantaged, 1945-1990. In M. Katz (Ed.), The `underclass' debate: Views from history (pp. 366-403). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kantor, H. (1988). Learning to earn: Work, school, and vocational reform in California, 1880-1930. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Kantor, H., & Tyack, D. (Eds.). (1982). Work, youth, and schooling: Historical perspectives on vocationalism in American education. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Articles and Essays

Kantor, H. & Lowe R. (2007). Terms of inclusion: Unity and diversity in public education. Educational Theory, 57, 369-88.

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (2006). From New Deal to no deal:  NCLB and the devolution of responsibility for equal educational opportunity.  Harvard Educational Review, 76, 474-502.

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (2004). Reflections on history and quality education. Educational Researcher, 33, 6-11.

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (2002). Vocationalism reconsidered. American Journal of Education, 109, 125-42.

Kantor, H. (2001). In retrospect: David Tyack's The One Best System. Reviews in American History, 29, 319-27.

Kantor, H. (1999). Race, joblessness, and education in the inner-city, 1970-1990. The Urban Review, 31, 225-243.

Kantor, H. (1997). Equal opportunity and the federal role in education. Rethinking Schools, 11, 1, 8-12, 27.

Kantor, H., & Lowe, R. (1995). Class, race, and the development of federal education policy: From the New Deal to the Great Society. Educational Researcher, 24, 4-11.

Kantor, H. (1994). Managing the transition from school to work: the false promise of youth apprenticeship. Teachers College Record, 96, 442-461.

Kantor, H. (1991). Education, social reform, and the state: ESEA and federal education policy in the 1960s. American Journal of Education, 100, 47-83.

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (1989). Reform or Reaction?  Harvard Educational Review, 59, 127-138. 

Lowe, R. & Kantor, H. (1989).  Considerations on writing the history of educational reform in the1960s.  Educational  Theory, 39, 1-9. 

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (1986).  Choosing a vocation:  the origins and transformation of vocational guidance in California, 1910-1930. History of Educational Quarterly, 26, 351-375. 

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (1986). Work, education, and social reform:  The ideological origins of vocational education, 1890-1920.  American Journal of Education, 94, 401-426. 

Kantor, H. & Lowe, R. (1986).  Repeat performances. Harvard Educational Review, 56, 69-76.