On Fri, 20 Nov 2009, SA wrote:
>> Do I take it that you are talking about public primary and secondary
>> education? If so, I have vague recollections of early public ed at
>> that level in New England before the late 19th C (but I could surely be
>> wrong).
>
> Yeah. Mass public ed started in Massachusetts in the 1830's or 1840's as
> an elite project to civilize and render more docile the Irish working
> class. And it's a good thing too.
To be fair, the overt ideology of the common schools movement was to overcome felt class differences by class integration, by teaching them together in the same class rooms. It was a triumphant republican ideology. And although vitiated in many ways since through private schools and tracking, it's very different from the usual European experience of sharply divided secondary school systems, one headed to university and one to the workplace. FBOW, it was huge success in its mission. Common schools are a big reason why Americans think of themselves as one big middle class.
The most famous guy in nationalizing this movement was Henry Barnard.
Michael