The history of American education is quite intriguing. I’m particularly interested in the higher purposes of schooling — though not all the facts featured in this multi-part series will explicitly relate to this. Some purposes have faded away, others persist to this day. Imparting religious beliefs, patriotism and citizenship, moral values, the desire to build a new socialistic society (see later articles, not so much this one), and more demonstrate how far and how often education stepped beyond more basic aims like the acquisition of academic knowledge or occupational preparation. Let’s explore some of these purposes and other aspects of education history together.

When schools inculcating patriotism was deemed necessary for national survival

In the early republic, education was often seen as an important means of preserving the new nation — its liberties and system of government. Schools could impart loyalty and virtue that would ensure both obedience and wise politics. Historian Carl Kaestle argues in Pillars of the Republic that post-war rebellions, ideological factionalism, and fears that the United States was too diverse for democracy to last motivated the thinking of some Founders and educational reformers (p. 4-5). Schools needed to produce wise voters and lawmakers, so students would need to be made to think in certain ways. 

Noah Webster insisted schools should develop in students an “inviolable attachment to their own country,” while Benjamin Rush saw the need to “convert men into republican machines” who do their part in the collective whole: “good citizens of the republic” were the necessary output of schools, and “the most useful citizens have been formed from those youth who have never known or felt their own wills till they were one and twenty years of age” (p. 7). The “obligations of patriotism should be inculcated” in students (Rush, On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1798). Thomas Jefferson, in his 1778 “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” wrote that in addition to public happiness, education would give ordinary people “knowledge…which history exhibiteth” that would allow them to recognize “ambition” and “tyranny” — and “defeat” it, protecting the “sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.” Emma Willard, in “Proposing a Plan for Female Education” (1819), echoed such sentiments when she wrote that educating women could bring “national glory” and help defend liberties. Indoctrination was for a noble purpose indeed, being how freedom, republicanism, and stability would endure.

This purpose appears in both the earliest and later years of schooling. The New England Primer, which helped little ones learn the alphabet through rhyme, updated its positive views on monarchs to read: “Queens and Kings / Are gaudy things” (Urban, American Education, p. 34). Geography textbooks glorified the beauty of the United States and its republic system, stomped on people from other nations (the Mexicans and Spanish had “bad qualities,” the Irish were “blundering,” the English “haughty”), and in other ways encouraged national pride (Nash, Women’s Education in the United States, p. 46). Students in academies would also learn about Rome and how without citizen virtue a republic would fall (p. 47). These ideas were impressed upon both boys and girls alike, with republican virtue important for male voters or lawmakers and for republican mothers and wives, who were expected to guide and influence men positively (Kaestle, 5; see also Rush, Thoughts on Female Education, 1787). Benjamin Rush recommended subjects like eloquence, which was taught in the Roman Empire and constituted the “first accomplishment in a republic” and was as important as the “sword” in “bringing about American revolution” (On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1798). Ancient republics, the tyranny of European states, and of course the American system of government and U.S. history should also be studied.

When girls had highly similar educations to boys, to a point

In the 17th and 18th centuries, while colleges, many apprenticeships, grammar schools, and other enterprises were solely for boys and young men, schools launched by towns, churches, tutors, and benefactors were generally open to girls and boys alike (and later there were secondary schools like academies and seminaries for young women to continue their studies). Urban, in American Education, highlights girls being educated (p. 20, 33), but mostly just uses the all-inclusive “children” (19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 32, and so on). It is clear that the purposes that drove education applied to boys and girls — the Puritans wanted all children to learn the faith and attain salvation, not just boys (29-35); revolutionary thinkers wanted everyone completely devoted to the new nation, and educated women had a role to play in that.

We indeed observe schooling for girls aiding nationalism and male control of society. “Girls’ robust education was to be put to the service of…‘Republican motherhood,’ in which ‘righteous mothers were asked to raise the virtuous male citizens on whom the health of the Republic depended’” (Urban, 67; see also Kaestle, 5). Rush wrote that a purpose of education for women was to “concur in instructing their sons in the principles of liberty and government” (Thoughts on Female Education, 1787). Teaching children was the “duty of mothers.” Other positives of learning related to assisting working husbands with bookkeeping or property management. Education was for equipping women to fulfill duties in the home. This was part of a larger trend to redirect women away from public life after advancements during the Revolution. 

The early republic era entailed the reinforcement of the traditional gender order alongside challenges to that order. Urban uses the phrases “complex,” “contradictory,” and “paradoxical” (67). There were clashing sets of ideas: It made sense to Americans — men and women alike — that women should learn intellectual subjects (be a part of the enlightenment tradition) like philosophy, mathematics, language, science, history, government, and so on, and some even considered women to not only be as worthy of intellectual study as men but indeed their intellectual equals (Urban, 67; Nash, 35-36). But after schooling, women should not have “independence” or freedom or power in social life, they should serve as mothers, or at most seamstresses, bookkeepers, teachers, and a limited number of other roles (Urban, 66-67). Beings of equal intelligence or worthiness of education did not deserve social and political equality! 

Another tension was between all the revolutionary rhetoric of liberty and women’s subordinate status, a contradiction women drew attention to. Women justified more education and liberties using the philosophy that justified the Revolution: “The awareness of Abigail Adams, Judith Sargent Murray, Mercy Warren, and a few other women who questioned traditional gender relations and educational conventions was rooted in the same Enlightment faith that motivated their husbands and other patriots…” (Urban, 67). Emma Willard implies that because the United States is an enlightened place, caring about liberty, including that of women, educating women is appropriate (“Proposing a Plan for Female Education,” 1819).

Higher education for men and women was generally quite similar, as the large majority of men and women did not attend academy, college, or seminary school. In the context of the men and women who actually did attend such institutions, we see in Nash and Urban that there was much crossover in terms of what was taught, again pretty similar educations, minus some subjects and vocation preparation being reserved for a specific gender (and of course colleges being only for men, to study medicine, law, theology, and so on). 

When it comes to childhood or lower education, something similar can perhaps be said, but with inverted attendance figures. The schooling rate for children in the early republic era appears high. Kaestle (p. 11) estimates that in New York in 1800, 75% of school-age children attended state-funded schools alone, for at least some of the school year. Meaning even higher enrollment when schools that were not state funded are factored in. So with elementary education, one could again say that boys and girls had similar experiences, this time given that a majority participated. Then, again, in the context of what’s actually being taught, Urban (chapters 2-4) suggests highly similar curricula for boys and girls.

When schooling was all about morality and crime prevention

The major goal of common schools — state-funded, open and free to most American children — was to develop moral character. In the early nineteenth century, a lack of virtue was seen as a cause of individual and societal decline, real or potential. Without restraint, self-sacrifice, intelligence, devotion to the common good, hard work, and other marks of good character, people would fall into poverty, vice, and crime (Kaestle, 81-82). Further, morality (most always founded on Christianity in this era) was key to protecting and maintaining the republican experiment. Without commitment to the common good, noble behavior, and a shared understanding of what’s right among citizens, voters, and lawmakers, democracy and liberty would fall (Kaestle, 79-80). Significant social change (industrialization and urbanization creating new forms of poverty, immigration creating both less homogenous populations and concerns about loyalty to and understanding of American ideals) fueled interest in shared moral and attitudinal frameworks (Kaestle, 80).

In Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book (1831), teaching children to read was combined with teaching them to “know their duty” (p. 43-46). “You must not tell a lie,” it instructs, “nor do hurt… Help such as want help, and be kind…” Children are told to “love the law [of God] and keep it,” “walk with the just and do good,” and “shun vice,” never swearing, cheating, or stealing, or else suffer a “bad end.” These instructions are quite lengthy and repetitive to drive home the message. Webster’s text also offers comparative stories of a hardworking, thrifty man who becomes wealthy and a lazy drunk who lives in poverty and misery. Proper character, enforced by schools, was judged to be the cure for American social ills. “All the members of society have a direct interest in the manners of each of its individuals,” reformer Horace Mann wrote (Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Education, 1840), reflecting the popular sentiment of the age.

Enforcement may or may not have involved corporal punishment. In the reform era, there was a certain stress on creating a nurturing environment to ensure good behavior was internalized and intrinsically motivated, rather than attempting to beat it into children (Kaestle, 89). Some teachers of course still struck palms. But the most important thing was that order and obedience reigned, as this would ensure children developed proper moral character (Kaestle, 96-97). Mann, in the Fourth Annual Report, wrote that “if order do not pervade the school, as a whole, and in all its parts, all is lost…” It was critical that teachers have strong management and disciplinary skills (teacher qualifications were part of the common school reform agenda). Without those skills, without order, the consequences would be “disastrous.” Physical punishment (Mann uses “chastisement”), while lawful and still widely accepted by the citizenry, was a “last resort,” the “ultimate resource,” a “barbarism” that was still at times “necessary.” If order (so necessary for the development of virtue) required physical discipline, so be it.

In his Twelfth Annual Report (1848), Mann advocates for “Moral Education,” framing the law as an insufficient method of reducing criminality. “For every lock that is made, a false key is made to pick it” — people will earn “dishonest profits” from illegal black market sales, they’ll smuggle, commit fraud, and so on. The law is not enough, you need to develop good character in children to prevent them from becoming adults capable of crime. Religious education and the ethics that came with it played a role here as well.

“Political Education” is also highlighted. Without intelligence, a republican form of government cannot function; Mann compares it to a “mad-house” without supervisors. Students must understand the “true nature and functions of the government,” to prepare for later democratic participation. The Constitution, the separation of powers, elections, the courts, and so on must be understood and supported, discouraging “rebellion” or vindictively taking matters into one’s own hands in a criminal fashion. 

Common schools, then, were a “preventative means against dishonesty, against fraud, and against violence.”

When Horace Mann saw schools as fighting poverty and capitalism

The famous Horace Mann had much more to say about education and morality in his 1848 report. 

“Intellectual Education” was his “means of removing poverty,” an unnecessary evil in society. Schooling, Mann declares, is the great equalizer of social conditions — “all are to have an equal chance for earning” income and growing prosperous after a proper education. The “highest duty of a State” is to safeguard people’s well-being, expanding “human welfare,” thus common schools are necessary. Mann’s opinions are sympathetic toward the poor, containing a high degree of class consciousness, castigating the “treasures” that exist beside “starvation,” declaring “the earth contains abundant resources” enough for all, and highlighting the “grossest inequalities” between those who “toil and earn” (workers) and those who “seize and enjoy” (employers, capitalists). “Labor” (workers) and “property” (employers, capitalists) can be brought into the “same class” through education, so that the former are no longer “subjects” of the latter, under a “tyranny, in the form of capital.” 

We see in Kaestle’s fifth chapter that immoral character was often seen as the cause of poverty. Mann sees a connection, but his empathy is moving: “actual, living beings, beings that have hearts to palpitate” and precious “affections” are testing the “capacities of human nature for suffering and for sin.” Suffering and sin go together, but it’s not so clear that Mann blames the sin for the suffering. Perhaps to a degree — we know he blames poor character for crime and violent rebellion. We also know that he does not believe intelligent, educated people will remain poor — there’s something wrong with the poor that if fixed will solve the social ill. But he seems to assign at least partial blame to the capitalist economic system, with its “antagonistic” classes, the tyranny of employers who seize wealth from workers, gross inequalities, “one class possess[ing] all the wealth and the education,” and so on. 

His explicit comments on morality here are interesting. Education “gives each man the independence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of other men.” This is a reference to the tyranny and seizing of wealth and low wages and so on, and turns the morality discussion around: the central problem isn’t your immorality, which common schools need to purge, it’s the immorality of others, of capitalists and employers and the rich, people you’ll encounter as a working adult. With education, you’ll be free (or freer) from class exploitation; you’ll be more intelligent, you’ll have more job opportunities, maybe avoid miserable factory life, start your own enterprises, grow prosperous, and so on. Mann isn’t highlighting the immorality of the poor, but rather the sins of the economic system and owners, who engage in “oppression.” Education can free people of that, reducing poverty (and, Mann adds, the riots, rebellions, and hostilities that come with it). 

Mann explicitly places blame for poverty on society and economy, rather than the poor, when he notes “miseries that spring from the coexistence, side by side, of enormous wealth and squalid want.” Moral development in schools is no doubt part of how education will help bring about equality and prosperity for all in the nineteenth century, but moral failure does not appear to be the only cause of poverty or daunting challenge in this reformer’s mind.

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