Abstract
When members of the Owenite community at New Harmony came together to create a model for the reformation of the world, they sought to improve every area of human endeavor from religion to agriculture. Their efforts in most matters were quickly, perhaps justifiably, forgotten, but their attempts to establish a new system of education had more lasting significance. Prominent pedagogic theorists came to Indiana to found schools that would cultivate rational, moral behavior. Despite some real successes, the reality of their program fell far short of their aspirations. The shortcomings of the community as a whole were the product of a complex set of factors, but an intellectual conflict between two of the founders was of particular importance. Robert Owen and William Maclure were brought together by a shared faith in certain educational methods and by a desire to found schools designed to cultivate rational, empirical abilities. Superficial similarities in their respective conceptions of enlightened education, however, disguised a fundamental disagreement about the purposes of that education. Owen saw human beings as primarily sensate creatures whose behavior and thought could be changed through an alteration of their physical environment. Maclure saw human beings as rational creatures, and changes in their condition would depend
Published Version
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