On the latest episode of Repeating History, our guest is Dr. Adam Laats. Dr. Laats is the author of Mr. Lancaster’s System: The Failed Reform that Created America’s Public Schools , published in 2024. Professor Laats and Bob discuss the origins of the American public education system in response to the unsuccessful Lancastrian movement Dewitt Clinton imported to New York from Great Britain in the 1820s.  From there, the conversation moves on to the evolution of the public school system, education reform, charter schools, and the relationship between public schools and private schools, which has been at the center of many legal and policy controversies over the last several years.

Dr. Laats is a professor in the history and education departments at Binghamton University. He has published numerous 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).

His work has also been published in Chronicle of Higher Education, Education Week, Time and Newsweek, Slate, The Atlantic, the New Republic, the Washington Post.