1925-
Journalist and Education Critic

Reformer.

In 1970 journalist and scholar Charles Silberman published Crisis in the Classroom, a critique of U.S. education that seized the attention of his intended audience: "teachers and students, school board members and taxpayers, public officials and civic leaders, newspaper and magazine editors and readers, television directors and viewers, parents and children." This ambitious volume, subtitled The Remaking of American Education, was researched during a three-year period when Silberman was serving as director of the Carnegie Study of the Education of Educators, and it added considerable respectability to the criticisms that had been made previously by radicals and dissidents. Silberman's status as a Fortune editor and as an objective observer gave his inquiry weight that other critics lacked.

Findings.

He begins the book with a status report on the state of U.S. education in the last third of the...