Academy Students in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Social Geography, Demography, and the Culture of Academy Attendance

Abstract

Academies and academy students increased substantially in number during the period from the American Revolution to the Civil War. Why? Who were these students and what did academy attendance mean to them? Theodore R. Sizer asked these questions in 1964, but his ability to answer them was limited by the absence of studies that focused on academy students. In this essay I reexamine Sizer's understanding of academies in light of evidence provided by subsequent studies of student populations. These studies include my own comparative analysis of data from nearly 500 Regents academies that operated in New York State between 1835 and 1890, as well as in-depth case studies of individual institutions by myself and others.