Public Education

The origins and evolution of American public education are inextricably interwoven with the development of cities and the social, political, cultural, economic, and technological forces that shaped the urbanization process. In many respects, the development of urban public schools was and remains a microcosm of cities themselves.

The beginnings of public education date to the colonial era, when towns and cities, as centers of commercial, cultural, and religious life, became “nurseries of learning.” While the family and the church assumed primary responsibility for educating young people, colonial officials took numerous initiatives to [Page 617]advance education. The Boston Latin School, organized in 1635, set a precedent for local control of public education and served as a model for colonial grammar schools, most of which offered a classical curriculum. Twelve years later, Massachusetts required every town with at least 50 households to establish an elementary school. The rapid advance of colonial commerce placed a premium on practical learning, and by the early 18th century, some New York schools injected an element of vocational education into their curricula. But whatever the subject matter, by the second quarter of the century, numerous colonial cities offered a modicum of public schooling.

There were, of course, many alternatives to public education. The wealthy generally favored private academies, especially for post-elementary education. At the other end of the spectrum, the Church of England's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sponsored schools for Native Americans and enslaved Africans, and Quaker Anthony Benezet organized the Philadelphia African School in 1782.

The public education movement made major strides during the first half of the 19th century, as reformers such as Boston lawyer Horace Mann, Connecticut educator Henry Barnard, Cincinnati biblical scholar Calvin Stowe, and Indiana minister Caleb Mills seized on common school education as a tool to instill moral virtue in the lower classes and maintain order in a society undergoing rapid change from industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. But equally important were the voices of urban businessmen, journalists, and politicians who viewed common school education as a vehicle to help the working class achieve economic and social respectability and to promote economic development. But despite competing motives, by midcentury, most cities and states in the Midwest and Northeast had at least a rudimentary system of taxsupported education.

Public schools in most communities were dominated by native Protestants who strove to inculcate the middle-class values of punctuality, persistence, order, and discipline and to instill in their pupils the importance of accepting their position in the social hierarchy rather than attempting to gain the trappings of wealth. In many localities, the curriculum was overtly Protestant, including classroom use of the King James Version of the Bible, prompting Roman Catholic bishops from New York and Boston to Detroit and Los Angeles to promote the development of parochial school systems.

The Civil War seriously disrupted the development of public schools. Across the nation, male teachers left the classroom for military duty. Schools in border communities were requisitioned by the Union Army for hospitals and administrative offices, and some closed for the duration of the war. While public education was less firmly established in the South, many of the region's schools were destroyed in battle or deteriorated from lack of use. However, the conflict also gave impetus to education for African Americans, as the Freedmen's Bureau, northern philanthropists, and religious organizations joined with blacks in communities across the South to establish Sunday schools and public schools.

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