The Common School as a Marketplace

Abstract

The making of a scholar and the making of a dollar often went hand in hand as an emphasis upon commercialism became synonymous with the common-school movement. Commonschool reformers of the nineteenth century, while seeking to provide a universal education for all people, were also creating a new market for educational enterprises. Profit-minded textbook publishers who saw this need realized the value of promoting the common school as a way to rapidly expand their sales. They further capitalized on the situation by producing and promoting many new series of graded textbooks,' often publishing educational periodicals to promote them. The West was developing its own economic personality and sense of regional identity. In Ohio there was a significant rise in exports and in manufacturing. New railroads were chartered and canals dug. The book-publishing industry began to expand, and, before long, Cincinnati became the bookpublishing center of the West and remained so for decades. Dr. Daniel Drake, an early observer of the western scene, wrote: We should foster western genius, encourage western writers, patronize western publishers, augment the number of western readers, and create a western heart.2 Coincident to this rise in industrialism and intensification of a distinctly western viewpoint came the common-school movement. With the passage of Ohio's first school law in 1821, common schools began to develop and expand. As a result, new educational markets were created. In order to reach these markets, textbook publishers offered a systematic approach to reading instruction in the form of graded series of textbooks. This attempt to standardize the methodology of reading appealed to educators more concerned with uniformity than with the content and quality of