Adam Laats

Why do American schools look the way they do? That’s the question that has driven me over the past twenty years. If we don’t understand the history, we don’t have a chance at answering the question.

I began my historical research as a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, looking into the biggest battles about school–the big battles over issues of race, religion, and science. I studied the roots of our current fights about teachers and textbooks. Turns out, today’s ugly politics are no exception–they are the chronic condition of public education in the USA.

Over the years, my work has been made possible by generous grants and awards. Organizations such as the Spencer Foundation and the National Academy of Education have sponsored my research. I’ve been helped by archival grants, too, from great places such as the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New York State Archives, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Plus, I’ve been honored by awards such as the Friend of Darwin award from the National Center for Science Education and the Robert Hampel Outstanding Book Award (twice!–once as runner-up) from the History of Education Society. I’ve had the honor to share my work with audiences around the world, including the Royal Dutch Institute of Rome, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Cologne, Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania, and many others.

These days, I’m looking into the longer patterns, trying to uncover how schools have served as a marker of a vague but vital kind of full citizenship, of “real” Americanism. I’m also interested in the ways children shaped schools, even as so many well-intentioned reformers assumed schools would shape students.

I started out as a middle-school and high-school teacher in Milwaukee. I was lucky enough to do my PhD work with educational historian William J. Reese and the late, truly great historian of science and medicine Ronald L. Numbers. Now I teach at Binghamton University (State University of New York).

I’ve published a handful of books, including Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America’s Culture Wars (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education (Harvard University Press, 2015);  Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation  (with philosopher Harvey Siegel, University of Chicago Press, 2016); Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education (Oxford UP, 2018); Creationism USA (Oxford UP, 2020); and Mr. Lancaster’s System: The Failed Reform that Launched America’s Public Schools (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024).

With the recent spate of school culture wars, I’ve offered commentary in places such as Nature, Chronicle of Higher Education, Education Week, Time and Newsweek, Slate, The Atlantic, the Washington Post and the History News Network. The format is different from my academic histories, but the questions are all the same: Why do we keep fighting about schools? How do decisions about education get made…especially when we don’t agree?

Like all of us, I’ve got strong opinions about how public schools should look. As a teacher, citizen, and parent, I want our schools to be inclusive and well funded. I want the work of teachers to be respected. I want communities to have great schools that provide all their kids with great educations.

But I also try to understand the other side. Especially when things get heated, I think the first step is to look into the history, to try to figure out why we are suddenly all yelling, and how people figured these things out in the past.