Schooling, childhood, and bureaucracy

the long version

"This book is about how modern American childhood is shaped by the bureaucratic tools including mass testing, child psychology, and the status hiearchies. This happens in a world where there is an emotional attachment to children in which no child can be left behind, even as the bureaucracies pragmatically sort through individuals of differing abilities. The result is childhoods shaped to meet competing American ideals for individualism, egalitarianism, and utililitarianism. The result is a conservative bureaucratic dance which resembles a game of rochambo, as individualism is trumped by egalitarianism, utilitarianism by individualism, and utilitarianism by egalitarianism"--