CHAPTER VI Reshaping Educational Policy

X H E organization of the relevant literature of the past three years requires the rather careful definition of the terms comprising the title of this chapter. Reshaping may be accomplished by individuals or by small groups or by broad impersonal social forces operating on all facets of our culture, including educational policy. The adjective "educational " may carry signifi-cances relating narrowly to formal endeavors in school classrooms or, more broadly, to society at large as in the church, state, family, armed forces, and fraternal organizations as well as the schools. Policy, defined as a course of administrative action, may refer to that of a single classroom teacher or principal on the one hand, or to that of the United Nations operating thru Unesco on the other. Where along these continua should attention be focused? In a dictator-ship a single individual may, in fact, determine and shape policy. Currently, education in America, whether broadly or narrowly conceived, is shaped by many relatively small, locally autonomous administrative units, suc