Description
Book SynopsisHow school reformers in the Progressive Erawho envisioned the public school as the quintessential American institutionlaid the groundwork for contemporary battles over the structure and curriculum of public schools. Around the turn of the twentieth century, a generation of school reformers began touting public education's unique capacity to unite a diverse and diffuse citizenry while curing a broad swath of social and political ills. They claimed that investing in education would equalize social and economic relations, strengthen democracy, and create high-caliber citizens equipped for the twentieth century, all while preserving the nation's sacred traditions. More than anything, they pitched the public school as a quintessentially American institution, a patriotic symbol in its own rightand the key to perfecting the American experiment. In Making Schools American, Cody Dodge Ewert makes clear that nationalism was the leading argument for schooling during the Progressive Era. Bring
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction. The Main Hope of the Nation
1. Spreading "the Spirit of Patriotism": Recasting Public Education in Late-Nineteenth-Century New York State
2. Schools on Parade: Building a National School Reform Movement in the 1890s
3. Americanizing Zion: Public Education and the Mormon Question, 1887–1900
4. Building a "Purer, Better, Braver Citizenship": Civics in Progressive Era Utah
5. Heroic Past, Shameful Present: Progress, Tradition, and School Reform in Texas, 1907–1923
Epilogue
Notes
Index
