1. Contemporary calls for education reform are found in a dazzling number of government documents, newspaper articles, scholarly pieces, and education policy proposals. For a sample of the most influential see: National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C., 1983); Education Commission of the States, Action for Excellence: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Our Nation's Schools (Washington, D.C., 1983); Making the Grade: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Policy (New York, 1983); National Science Foundation, Educating Americans for the Twenty-First Century: A Plan of Action for Improving Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education for all American Elementary and Secondary Students So That Their Achievement Is the Best in the World by 1995 (Washington, D.C., 1983); Education and Economic Progress toward a National Education Policy: The Federal Role (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

For a series of good scholarly articles, see Teachers College Record (Winter 1984); Theory into Practice, Special Issue on Civic Learning (Winter 1988).Google Scholar

2. An exploration of the discovery and development of group learning situations and their links to ideologies and economies can be found in Hamilton, David, “Adam Smith and the Moral Economy of the Classroom System,” Curriculum Studies 12 (1980): 281–98.Google Scholar

3. Republican educational sensibilities are explored in Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876 (New York, 1980); Freeman Butts, R., Public Education in the United States: From Revolution to Reform (New York, 1978); Kaestle, Carl F., Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

4. Republican sentiments about children are explored in Finkelstein, Barbara, “Casting Networks of Good Influence: The Reconstruction of Childhood in Nineteenth Century America,” in American Childhood: A Research Guide and Historical Handbook, ed. Ray Hiner, N. and Hawes, Joseph M. (Westport, Conn., 1985); Finkelstein, Barbara, Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in Popular Primary Schools in Nineteenth-Century United States (London, 1989). The analysis of women and republicanism is explored in Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980); Norton, Mary Beth, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston, 1980).Google Scholar

5. For an exploration of rural patterns of education in the early-nineteenth-century United States, see Finkelstein, , Governing the Young; Fuller, Wayne E., The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Middle West (Chicago, 1982); Fuller, Wayne E., “The Teacher in the Country School,” in American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work , ed. Warren, Donald R. (New York, 1989), 98–118.Google Scholar

6. Finkelstein, Barbara, “Reading, Writing, and the Acquisition of Identity,” in Regulated Children/Liberated Children: Education in Psychohistorical Perspective, ed. Finkelstein, Barbara (New York, 1979), 114–39; idem, “The Schooling of American Childhood, 1820–1920,” in A Century of Childhood (Rochester, N.Y., 1984). For recent explorations see Warren, , ed., American Teachers .Google Scholar

7. The circumstances of Mann's early life are in the following: Tyler, Mary Mann, Peabody and Mann, George C., eds., Life and Works of Horace Mann (Boston, 1891), 5 vols.; and in Tyler, Mary Mann, Peabody, Life of Horace Mann (Washington, D.C., 1937). For biographies, see: Messerli, Jonathan, Horace Mann: A Biography (New York, 1972); Curti, Merle, The Social Ideas of American Educators (Paterson, N.J., 1959).Google Scholar

8. The pattern of his early nurture mirrored the patterns of “evangelical purists” as described brilliantly in Greven, Philip, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

9. Finkelstein, Barbara, “Perfecting Childhood: Horace Mann and the Origins of Public Education in the United States,” Bibliography 13 (Winter 1990): 6–21.Google Scholar

10. Finkelstein, , “Reading, Writing, and the Acquisition of Identity”; idem, Governing the Young; idem, “The Schooling of American Childhood.” Google Scholar

11. Not all historians agree with this point of view. In recent work on the origin of public education in Canada, Houston, Susan and Prentice, Allison argue that cultural resonances between home and school existed. It is possible that the Canadian and American examples are different. It is possible that Horace Mann had an exceptionally emotional response to schooling. My own reading of hundreds of autobiographies suggests that the culture of the home and of the school might have been resonant in certain Protestant families in rural areas, but were utterly disjoined for most other categories of young people—Catholics, African Americans, native Americans, etc. Google Scholar

12. General treatments of education history in the cities can be found in Goodenow, Ronald K. and Ravitch, Diane, eds., Schools in Cities: Consensus and Conflict in American Educational History (New York, 1983). See also Kaestle, Carl F., The Evolution of an Urban School System: New York City, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973); Finkelstein, , Governing the Young; Hogan, , “The Market Revolution.” Google Scholar

13. Quoted in Bremner, Robert H., ed., Children and Youth in America: A Documentary History (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 177.Google Scholar

14. Rush, Benjamin, “Letter to the Citizens of Philadelphia and of the District of Southward and the Northern Liberties,” Independent Gazateer, 27 Mar. 1787, in Letters of Benjamin Rush , ed. Butterfield, Lyman H. (Princeton, 1951), 1: 413–31.Google Scholar

15. For an analysis of the Infant School Movement, see May, Dean and Vinovskis, Maris A., “A Ray of Millennial Light: Early Education and Social Reform in the Infant School Movement in Massachusetts, 1826–1840,” in Family and Kin in Urban Communities, 1700–1930, ed. Hareven, Tamara (New York, 1977), 62–100; see also, “Report of the Boston Infant School Society,” American Annals of Education 2 (1830): 296–98.Google Scholar

Sunday schools are explored in Kaestle, Origins of an Urban School System; Kaestle, Carl F. and Vinovskis, Maris A., “From Apron Strings to ABC's” Parents, Children, and Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts,” in Turning Points: Historical and Sociological Essays on the Family, eds. Demos, John and Boocock, Sarane Spence (Chicago, 1978).Google Scholar

16. Lancaster, Joseph, The British System of Education: Being a Complete Epitome of the Improvements and Inventions Practiced by Joseph Lancaster: To Which Is Added a Report of the Trustees of the Lancaster School at Georgetown, Columbia (Washington, D.C., 1812); idem, The Lancasterian System of Education with Improvements by Its Founder (Baltimore, 1821).Google Scholar

17. Quoted in Monroe, Paul, Founding of the American Public School System: A History of Education in the United States (New York, 1925), 367–68.Google Scholar

18. Finkelstein, , “Reading, Writing, and the Acquisition of Identity.” Google Scholar

19. “Examinations, Merit, and Morals: The Market Revolution and Disciplinary Power in Philadelphia Public Schools, 1838–1868,” Historical Studies in Education (Winter 1991), in press. The historiography of nineteenth-century education and economics is evolving. Traditional treatments emphasize the dominance of class interest as the foundation of public school ideology. For classic works in this mode, see Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Boston, 1968); idem, Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America, expanded ed. (New York, 1975); Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York, 1976); Troen, Selwyn K., The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St. Louis School System, 1838–1928 (Columbia, Mo., 1975).Google Scholar

More recently, historians have approached the intersections with a more complex set of categories. Creative theoretical work can be found in educational history in the work of Hogan, David J., Class and Reform: School and Society in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Philadelphia, 1985); idem, “The Market Revolution and Disciplinary Power: Joseph Lancaster and the Psychology of the Early Classroom System,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (Fall 1989): 381–419; idem, “Modes of Discipline: Affective Individualism and Pedagogical Reform in New England, 1820–1850,” American Journal of Education 99 (Nov. 1990): 1–56; idem, “‘… The Silent Compulsion of Economic Relations’: Markets, Preference Formation, and the Demand for Education” (unpublished paper, 1991).Google Scholar

See also Haskell, Thomas L., “Capitalism and the Origins of Humanitarian Sensibility,” American Historical Review 90 (Apr. 1985): pt. 1: 339–61; pt. 2: 90 (June 1985): 547–66.Google Scholar

20. An array of studies documents the transformation of schooling in the nineteenth century using a variety of interpretive lenses. For analyses of the historiography, see Finkelstein, , Governing the Young; and idem, “Education Historians as Mythmakers,” Review of Research in Education vol. 18 (New York, in press).Google Scholar

21. Webster, Daniel, Works (Boston, 1854), 41.Google Scholar

22. “Report on Education by the Workingmen's Committee of Philadelphia, 1830,” in A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, ed. Commons, John R. et al. (Cleveland, 1910–11).Google Scholar

23. Drake, Daniel, “The Americanization of Immigrants,” in Transactions of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers (Cincinnati, 1836), 81–82.Google Scholar

24. For an elaboration of women's roles in public school reform, see Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New Haven, 1973); Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977); Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, Conn., 1977).Google Scholar

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26. By far the best treatment of this subject can be found in Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988). See also Perkins, Linda for a focus on women, “The History of Blacks in Teaching: Growth and Decline within the Profession,” American Teachers , ed. Warren, , 344–70.Google Scholar

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28. Hogan, David, “Modes of Discipline: The New England Pedagogy.” For excellent treatment of the ideas of reformers, see Lasch, Christopher, “The Great Experiment: What Went Wrong?” (keynote address, Division F, History and Historiography, American Educational Research Association, 1990); see also Kaestle, , Pillars of the Republic; Butts, , Public Education in the United States; Cremin, , American Education: The National Experience; Finkelstein, , “Casting Networks of Good Influence”; idem, “Perfecting Childhood.” Google Scholar

29. For analyses of school attendance, see Rury, John L., “Who Became Teachers? The Social Characteristics of Teachers in American History,” American Teachers, ed. Warren, , 9–49.Google Scholar

30. Finkelstein, , “The Schooling of American Childhood”; idem, “Casting Networks of Good Influence”; idem, Governing the Young .Google Scholar

31. These processes are explored theoretically in Liston, Daniel P., “Have We Explained the Relationships between Curriculum and Capitalism? An Analysis of the Selective Tradition,” Educational Theory 34 (Summer 1984): 241–53.Google Scholar

32. There are several good studies of the social, political, economic, racial, moral, and cultural ideas contained in American textbooks. Their best exemplar is Elson, Ruth Miller, Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln, Neb., 1964).Google Scholar

33. Macleod, Anne S., “American Childhood in the Early Nineteenth Century: Myths and Realities” (unpublished paper, Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Program, University of Maryland, 1980).Google Scholar

34. Elson, , Guardians of Tradition. Visual expressions can be seen in Arnold Henry Guyot, Physical Geography (Boston, 1866); Finkelstein, , Governing the Young, 20; Goodrich, Samuel G., A National Geography for Schools (New York, 1845).Google Scholar

35. Hogan, David J., “Examinations, Merit, and Morals.” See also Finkelstein, , Governing the Young .Google Scholar

36. By far the most sophisticated analyses of these phenomena are to be found in Hogan, David, “Making It in America: Work, Education, and Social Structure,” in Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism in American Education, ed. Kantor, Harvey A. and Tyack, David B. (Stanford, Calif., 1982), 142–79. See also the excellent work of Labaree, David F., The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven, Conn., 1988). These kinds of observations are also made in Rodgers, Daniel T. and Tyack, David B., “Mapping Critical Research Areas,” in Work, Youth, and Schooling , ed. Kantor, and Tyack, , 167–84.Google Scholar

37. Finkelstein, , “Schooling of American Childhood”; Hogan, , “Modes of Discipline.” Google Scholar

38. This synthesis does not emerge in any single work, but its principal features are developed in the following monographs, articles, and collections focusing on modernization processes in educational history. Collins, Randall, “Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification,” American Sociological Review 36 (1971): 1002–19; Lazerson, Marvin, Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870–1915 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); Demos, and Boocock, , eds., Turning Points; Bailyn, Bernard, Education in the Forming of American Society: A Reinterpretation (Chapel Hill, 1960); Goodenow, and Ravitch, , eds., Schools in Cities; Katz, Michael B., The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1975); Marsden, William E., “Ecology and Nineteenth-Century Urban Education,” History of Education Quarterly 23 (Spring 1983): 29–55; Reeder, D. A., ed., Urban Education in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1978); Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. Finkelstein, Barbara, “Exploring Community in Urban Educational History,” in Schools in Cities, ed. Goodenow, and Ravitch, , ch. 11; “Redoing Urban Educational History,” in Urban Education History in Four Nations: The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada , ed. Goodenow, Ronald K. and Marsden, William (London, in press), 39.Google Scholar

40. For elaborations, see Finkelstein, , Governing the Young; Hogan, , “Modes of Discipline”; Labaree, , The Making of the American High School. There is also an array of curriculum studies exploring this theme.Google Scholar

41. The best recent theoretical work on education and economic reform is contained in Carnoy, Martin and Levin, Henry M., Schooling and Work in the Democratic State (Stanford, Calif., 1985); Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Democracy and Capitalism: Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought (New York, 1986); Katz, , Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools .Google Scholar

42. Kantor, Harvey A., Learning to Earn: School, Work, and Vocational Reform in California, 1880–1930 (Madison, Wis., 1988).Google Scholar

43. An array of historians has emphasized the emergence of an ideology of school reform which drew from Protestantism, republicanism, and capitalism for its major emphases. As elegant as this formulation may be, and as widely invoked, it nonetheless ignores equally powerful value systems arising from different religions, ethnic affiliations, local values, and distinctly unmodern modes of thinking, feeling, doing, and being. For examples of the reigning interpretation, see Kaestle, , Pillars of the Republic; Kantor, , Learning to Earn; Labaree, , The Making of an American High School. For examples of studies emphasizing ethnic and cultural ideology, see Perlmann, Joel, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935 (Cambridge, Eng., 1988); Katznelson, Ira and Weir, Margaret, Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline of the Democratic Ideal (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

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45. Ibid., 4–16.Google Scholar

46. Hogan, David, “Examinations, Merit, and Morals.” Google Scholar

47. Solomon, Barbara Miller, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education (New Haven, Conn., 1985); Finkelstein, Barbara, “The Revolt against Selfishness: Women and the Dilemmas of Professionalism in Early Childhood Education,” in Professionalism and the Early Childhood Practitioner , ed. Spodek, B., Saracho, O. N., and Peters, D. L. (New York, 1988); Conway, Jill R., The Female Experience in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century America: A Guide to the History of American Women (Princeton, N.J., 1985); Jensen, Julie M., “Not Only Ours, but Others: The Quaker Teaching Daughters of the Mid-Atlantic, 1790–1850,” History of Education Quarterly 24 (Fall 1984): 3–58; Kaufman, Polly Welts, Women Teachers on the Frontier (New Haven, Conn., 1984); Douglas, , The Feminization of American Culture .Google Scholar

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49. Scott, Ann F., “The Ever-Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminar, 1822–1872,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (Summer 1979): 3–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. Anderson, , The Education of Blacks in the South, 88.Google Scholar

51. Ibid.; Jones, Jacqueline, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980); Perkins, Linda M., “The History of Blacks and Teaching: Growth and Decline within the Profession,” American Teachers , ed. Warren, , 344–70.Google Scholar

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54. General surveys of the rise of vocational education are in Cremin, Lawrence A., The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York, 1964); Krug, Edward A., The Shaping of the American High School, 1880–1920 (New York, 1964); Lazerson, Marvin and Norton Grubb, W., American Education and Vocationalism: Documents in Vocational Education, 1870–1979 (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

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55. Rodgers, and Tyack, , “Work, Youth, and Schooling,” 278.Google Scholar

56. For treatments of ideological, material, and political foundations of vocationalism in early-twentieth-century education, see Kantor, and Tyack, , eds., Work, Youth, and Schooling (1982); Grubb, Norton W. and Lazerson, Marvin, American Education and Industrialism: Documents in Vocational Education, 1870–1970 (New York, 1974); Hogan, , Class and Reform; Kantor, , Learning to Earn; Labaree, , The Making of an American High School .Google Scholar

57. Quoted in Kantor, and Tyack, , eds., Work, Youth, and Schooling, 33.Google Scholar

58. Carnoy, and Levin, , Schooling and Work in the Democratic State.Google Scholar

59. Kantor, Harvey and Lowe, Robert, “Empty Promises,” Harvard Educational Review 57 (Feb. 1987): 68–76 (a review of Carnoy, and Levin, , Schooling and Work in the Democratic State); John Lie, “The Road to Nowhere?” Harvard Educational Review 57 (Aug. 1987): 331–50 (a review of Bowles and Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60. For a brilliant exploration of connections between gender and work, see Rury, John L., Education and Women's Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany, 1991). See also Clifford, Geraldine Jonçich, “Man/Woman/Teacher: Gender, Family, and Career in American Educational History,” in American Teachers , ed. Warren, , 293–344.Google Scholar

61. Kantor, , Learning to Earn, xiii.Google Scholar

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