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Literacy and Diversity: Themes from a Social History of the American Reading Public

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Carl F. Kaestle
Carl F. Kaestle*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

Twenty-five years ago Lawrence Cremin and Bernard Bailyn exerted a commanding influence on the field of American educational history. Between them they forged a new definition of the subject matter, studying families, churches, workplaces, and newspapers, not just schools. Some historians of education, including the present writer, did not learn this lesson very well. I defended my focus on schooling in The Evolution of an Urban School System by arguing that the big story in the nineteenth century was the transition from the informal mode of education that Bailyn had emphasized to a predominant reliance on formal schooling as an instrument of public educational policy by 1850. In Pillars of the Republic, ten years later, I again defended the focus on schooling: “If one wants to understand state policy toward education, schools are the appropriate focus. Society educates in many ways; the state educates through schools.”

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Winter 1988 , pp. 523 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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