Common School Movement

Background

The American Republic had been established but, as pointed out by the physician and educator [Page 189]Benjamin Rush, as well as by others, creating republican citizens was another and a longer matter. To this end, it was not sufficient that children go to school and learn what was necessary (which was generally not very much) for their future careers; it was essential, the common school reformers believed, that children receive an education that would make them into a particular model of citizen. That required central direction by the state; lacking that, the quality of schools was uneven and, more importantly, education could not have the powerful influence on the character of children that would transform society.

School attendance among Whites increased steadily between 1840 and 1860 in every region of the country except New England, where it dropped as a result of both the heavy immigration that occurred as the region industrialized and the heavy outmigration of school-oriented Yankee families to the Midwest. This schooling of White America (though partial in the South) was achieved by the efforts of thousands of men and women who created and sustained schools to teach children the common skills and knowledge and the common moral norms and traits of character thought necessary for their future and for that of the local community.

During the same period, similar efforts were under way in Western Europe, though with more central direction and less local initiative. Unlike in Europe, the story of the development of popular schooling in the United States cannot be told in terms of the laws enacted; there were laws in every state, but there were seldom provisions for enforcement. Not uncommonly, the laws were repealed if they did not gain popular support at the local level.

Premises and Practice

As a result, the common school movement was, more than anything, a climate of opinion in favor of certain sorts of arrangements for schooling that gradually spread in elite circles and then throughout American society until they came to be identified with progress and as essential for any self-respecting community. It was initially in the growing cities and towns that the prescriptions of the common school agenda were implemented, while rural America remained an educational backwater until well into the 20th century. It was common for city authorities to make provisions for schooling well beyond what their states were requiring.

...