Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Education and social change: Massachusetts as a case study
- 2 Trends in school attendance in nineteenth-century Massachusetts
- 3 From apron strings to ABCs: school entry in nineteenth-century Massachusetts
- 4 The prospects of youth: school leaving in eight Essex County towns
- 5 From one room to one system: the importance of rural–urban differences in nineteenth-century Massachusetts schooling
- 6 Education and social change in two nineteenth-century Massachusetts communities
- 7 Trends in educational funding and expenditures
- 8 The politics of educational reform in mid-nineteenth-century Massachusetts
- 9 Conclusion: the triumph of a state school system
- Appendix A Statistical tables
- Appendix B Definition of the variables contained in Tables A2.1 through A2.5, Appendix A
- Appendix C Discussion of adjustments, estimates, and extrapolations made in calculating Tables A2.1 through A2.5, Appendix A
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Education and social change: Massachusetts as a case study
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Education and social change: Massachusetts as a case study
- 2 Trends in school attendance in nineteenth-century Massachusetts
- 3 From apron strings to ABCs: school entry in nineteenth-century Massachusetts
- 4 The prospects of youth: school leaving in eight Essex County towns
- 5 From one room to one system: the importance of rural–urban differences in nineteenth-century Massachusetts schooling
- 6 Education and social change in two nineteenth-century Massachusetts communities
- 7 Trends in educational funding and expenditures
- 8 The politics of educational reform in mid-nineteenth-century Massachusetts
- 9 Conclusion: the triumph of a state school system
- Appendix A Statistical tables
- Appendix B Definition of the variables contained in Tables A2.1 through A2.5, Appendix A
- Appendix C Discussion of adjustments, estimates, and extrapolations made in calculating Tables A2.1 through A2.5, Appendix A
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We do not present a theory of educational development in this volume. Indeed, we have been impressed by the inadequacy of various one-to-one models that have characterized some recent works relating education to social change in nineteenth-century America, works that argue, implicitly or explicitly, that factory production caused educational reform, that urbanization caused school bureaucracy, that capitalism caused increased enrollments, or that modernization caused increased literacy. When these propositions have been sufficiently specific to test, as in the case of factory production and educational reform, they have at worst proved incorrect and at best provided only a partial picture of educational development. When the explanatory concept is more comprehensive, as with the notion of modernization, the danger lies in reifying the umbrella term into a cause independent of its parts. Furthermore, even among its most talented practitioners, modernization theories are plagued by the equation of modernity with progress and desirable change.
We seek in this volume to describe in detail a complex set of educational developments and to discuss some of their more important cultural, political, and socioeconomic concomitants. Systematic state schooling did not develop in a vacuum. It was not just the gradual evolution of some universally desirable idea. It developed in relationship to the evolving social structure, economic system, and cultural relationships of community, region, and nation. Because schooling had a cultural content more compatible with some groups than with others, and because schooling cost money, both to communities and to individuals, there were predisposing characteristics associated with school participation and educational reform.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1980