Common School Curriculum

Arising in the 19th century, common schools were the first widely accepted model for free public education in the United States. Common schools derived their name from their curricular mandate: the common branches. A major purpose of common schools was to create a common U.S. people who spoke the same language, held similar values, and embraced a shared national identity. Although later writers sometimes ascribe an aura of homogeneity to the common schools, in truth there was considerable variation among the common branches across the country. This entry discusses the formation of common schools, how the curriculum was enacted in the classroom, forces that influenced curriculum content, and how issues from the common school era have influenced contemporary curriculum studies.

Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a system of free public education where a child with intellectual merit could rise above his family's poverty. Jefferson's ideal of free public education found a champion in Massachusetts's secretary of education, Horace Mann. Perhaps Mann's greatest accomplishment was the production of his highly influential annual reports. These reports were read across the nation and generated much discussion around the need for public education.

The shape of the common school curriculum was heavily influenced by faculty psychology, a version of educational psychology popular at that time. That school of thought held that each individual possessed faculties of the mind, body, and soul. Faculty psychology taught that the mind, the soul, and the body should be developed in a balanced way. Just as the physical muscles grew stronger through regular exercise, the other faculties also grew stronger through use. The mind was believed to possess the faculties of memory, imagination, and judgment.

As faculty psychology was translated into classroom practice, the concept of a balanced development of mind, soul, and body was lost. In practice, schools focused primarily on the mind and secondarily on the soul. What emerged was the method of mental discipline that stressed rote memorization over understanding or application. Complete sections of textbooks were committed to memory. These memorized textbook narratives were then repeated verbatim to the teacher during a recitation session. As there were often 40 or more students per teacher and each child sometimes had a different textbook, each student spent hours memorizing alone and only a few minutes each day with the teacher reciting his or her lessons.

Because of the inefficiency of this mode of instruction, some elementary school students spent years going over the same material without being able to advance in their education even though they could have mastered it in a few months with different methods. The principle of thoroughness also shaped educators' thinking about what was appropriate to study and how to study it. Most educators of the 19th century believed children must complete their study of a subject before taking up another subject. Thus, most adults did not find it objectionable that children would study the same textbook sections repeatedly over the years.

From the perspective of the 21st century, it is easy to look back at the common schools and see homogeneity. However, although the common branches were the core of the common school curriculum, there was surprising disagreement, particularly in the early 19th century, as to what these common branches were. Reading was the one subject almost everyone agreed should be included in school. The primary purpose of early U.S. religious schools had been to teach children to read the Bible. Later, during revolutionary times, reading became important for keeping abreast of news and politics. Thus, the importance of reading as a subject in school was generally accepted. Similarly, moral-religious instruction was generally agreed upon as one of the common branches. However, as the population of the nation grew and diversified during the 1800s, the use of Protestant Christian values and sacred texts in the public schools became an area of controversy.

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