‘To Become GOOD MEMBERS OF CIVIL SOCIETY and PATRIOTIC AMERICANS’: Mass Education in the United States, 1870–1930

Abstract

The desire to educate future citizens stimulated the foundation of public schools in the United States. The resulting American public school system was one of the most extensive in the world during the period from 1870 to 1930, as measured by the proportion of children attending and public funds spent. Yet the transformations in the racial and religious composition of the eligible school population created tensions over the goals of public education and access to it. During this era, the changing national definitions of citizenship, including attempts to integrate African Americans and newer immigrant populations, led to a broadening of the citizenry that was often at odds with some Americans’ idealised vision of their country. Debates over American citizenship, while national in scope, were thus played out locally — and overtly — in the public schools. Public schools educated the heterogeneous population for American citizenship, and their uneven and contested rise represented the, at times ambiguous, development of a unified sense of nationhood.KeywordsPublic SchoolPublic EducationCitizenship EducationCivic EducationPublic High SchoolThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.