10 Books That Help Tell the Story of Education in America

The New England Primer, or, An easy and pleasant guide to the art of reading: adorned with cuts: to which is added the Catechism (1836)

Location: Gutman Special Collections, digitized
Reason: Published in Boston by the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, The New England Primer is one of the earliest examples of reading books published in the United States. Primers were often printed by religious organizations and churches with a goal of “uniting alphabet and creed.” During the early 19th century, primers served to teach citizens and students the alphabet, reading, and writing, but also to share uniform religious doctrine.

The Freedman’s Spelling Book (1866)

Location: Gutman Special Collections, digitized
Reason: The most important historical text in Gutman’s collection, this rare textbook has been included in many exhibitions, including the soon-to-be Obama Presidential Center Museum celebration. The cover of The Freedman's Spelling-Book, supplied by the American Tract Society in Boston, depicts a newly emancipated African American student writing the word “freedom” on a blackboard. The society produced a series of educational books for use in the South with the following stated purpose: “This is designed to be the first of a series of books for the use of the Freedmen in their schools, families, &c. While it teaches to read and write, the series will aim to communicate also religious and moral truth, and such instruction in civil and social duties as is needed by them in the new circumstances in which they are placed.”

Helen Keller: Souvenir of the First Summer Meeting of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (1891)

Location: Gutman Special Collections, digitized
Reason: This publication details how 11-year-old Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, learned to speak and write. Helen Keller would go on to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College, now Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, in 1904. The short booklet was published by the Volta Bureau, which was founded just a few years earlier by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., to serve as a library for deaf people and those researching deafness.

How We Think, John Dewey (1910)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: Likely the most cited and influential book/treatise in the domain of education, How We Think introduced the term “critical thinking” as the name of an educational goal. John Dewey describes his book as written for two purposes. The first was to help people to appreciate the kinship of children’s natural curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry to the scientific attitude. The second was to help people to consider how recognizing this kinship in educational practice “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste.”

My City (1965)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: My City, published 1965, is one title in the Bank Street Readers series, considered one of the first multiethnic urban basal readers that revolutionized early childhood literacy. The series was a collaboration between reading specialists at Bank Street College of Education in New York City and various children’s writers to ensure that books used to teach reading in urban school systems reflected city living and featured racial diversity. Books in the series include short stories, poetry, fables, and plays.

A Day with Debbie (1965)

Location: digitized
Reason: A Day with Debbie is one title in a series created by the Writing Committee of the Detroit Public Schools as part of their Great Cities Schools Improvement Program. A district effort, the series broke new ground for reading books by featuring city landscapes and diverse families instead of the traditional suburban, white family-focused readers of the era. The series was designed to address the “vital need for reading materials and instructional methods devised for children who live in multi-cultural, urban areas.”

Learning to Read: The Great Debate, Jeanne Chall (1965)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: This landmark book analyzed the long-standing controversy between phonics-based and whole-language reading instruction methods. Professor Jeanne Chall included research from classroom visits and an analysis of studies, and concluded that explicit, systematic phonics (teaching letter-sound relationships) is crucial for initial decoding, while whole-language methods alone often fail struggling readers, leading to future difficulties. The book also introduced Chall's highly influential stages of reading development, which map a child's progression from decoding to becoming a sophisticated reader.

Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street, Gerald Lesser (1974)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: In 1967, Professor Gerald Lesser was asked to help develop and lead the research department of the newly formed Children's Television Workshop (later known as the Sesame Workshop), the organization responsible for producing Sesame Street and other educational television programs. Lesser, an educator and psychologist, was also one of the first scholars to study the effect of television on young children. Children and Television chronicled how Sesame Street developed and included cartoons drawn by children's author Maurice Sendak.

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks (1994)

Location: Gutman General Collections (physical copy missing, digital version available)
Reason: This book is so influential in this contemporary era in which we strive to teach cultural responsiveness that Gutman’s copy was stolen because of desired ownership, need for use, or perhaps fear of its content, thus censorship. In this seminal book, bell hooks revolutionized critical pedagogy. She argued that education should be a liberatory act — one that actively challenges intersecting systems of oppression (racism, sexism, and classism) rather than simply reinforcing the status quo. Her work emphasizes engaged pedagogy, mutual vulnerability, and holistic student empowerment.

Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, Jarvis Givens (2021)

Location: Gutman General Collections and digitized 
Reason: As Professor Jarvis Givens makes clear in Fugitive Pedagogy, Carter G. Woodson had a profound influence on Black education, and the legacy of his work is evident in the pages of the Colored Teachers Associations journals. Woodson was the second Black person to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard and a life member of the American Teachers Association. One of Woodson's most significant contributions, as Given notes, was his development of Negro History Week, which later became Black History Month.