“Much more chewing”: a case study of resistance to school reform in rural New York during the early twentieth century

Abstract

ABSTRACT Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the United States was transformed from an agrarian nation to an industrial one, significant changes in the nation’s economic, social, and political structures, and the challenges that ensued, led to a multitude of diverse reform movements and a surge of regulatory measures from the federal and state governments. State governments played a particularly significant role in education reform by establishing new standards and regulations and taking steps to implement them in the nation’s schools. State education officials often met with resistance to reform from the residents of small rural school districts, who had enjoyed a long history of local control and resented the state’s interference. Conflict became more complicated when the residents within a rural community differed among themselves about school reform. This historical study investigates and analyses two documented disputes between the New York State Education Department and two common school districts in the Town of Conklin, Broome County, which occurred during the early 1900s. The physical condition of the schoolhouses led to both conflicts, and rural school consolidation and community infighting were additional factors that marked the second dispute. Both cases highlight the forces of local democratic governance and the central authority of the state over local schools and its role in the process of school reform. The Conklin cases are discussed and analysed within the larger contexts of localism, state-local tensions during the Progressive Era, rural school consolidation, and the reform initiatives of the New York State Education Department during this historical period.