Abstract
The history of curriculum debate involving science in the United States has touched all levels and concepts of schooling. It has involved a wide spectrum of competing interests and ideas. It has helped guide the framing of concepts as complex and influential as those of progress, human nature, and the national welfare. It has been a stage on which many players have entered, spoken, left, and returned (not always in the guise of farce). Above all, it is itself something from which a great deal can be learned: for in large part any current situation stands at the apex of this long history and cannot in any sense be divorced from what it reveals about the larger place of science and learning in American consciousness. Eric Hobsbawm once wrote that “the progress of schools and universities measures that of nationalism,” and that education generally is the “most conscious champion” of the state. History reveals this to be an enormous oversimplification, woefully expedient, and particularly so in the case of science. Here, in fact, nationalism itself can be revealed as a collision of many conflicting interests, myths, visions, and hopes, all of which at some point took the scientific as legitimating dais. No committed history could be so reductive. It must rather open both inward and outward, toward the past and its continued momentum.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abir-Am, P., and Outram, D. (Eds.). (1987).Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979 Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Adams, H. (1885),History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson Library of America, New York.
Bailyn, B. (1967).The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Harvard, Cambridge.
Bailyn, B. (1960).Education in the Forming of American Society Norton, New York.
Ballantine, J. (1983).The Sociology of Education. Princeton University Press, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Bayertz, K. (1985). Spreading the spirit of science: Social determinants of the popularization of science in 19th-century Germany. In Shinn, T., and Whitley, R. (eds.),Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularization D. Reidel, Boston, pp. 209–227.
Beaver, D. De B. (1971). Altruism, patriotism, and science: Scientific journalism in the early republic.American Studies 12: 10.
Bell, W. J., Jr. (1955).Early American Science: Needs and Opportunities for Study University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Bowen, J. (1975).A History of Western Education, Vol. II: Sixth to Sixteenth Century St. Martin's Press, New York.
Boyd, W. (1966).The History of Western Education (8th ed.). Barnes and Noble, New York.
Brock, W. H. (1990). Science education. In Olby, R. C., Cantor, G. N., Christie, J. R. R., and Hodge, M. J. S. (Eds.),Companion to the History of Modern Science Routledge, London, pp. 946–960.
Brown, C. M. (1989).Benjamin Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Cobban, A. B. (1975).The Medieval Universities: Their Development and Organization Methuen, London.
Cole, S. (1938).Liberal Education in a Democracy Harper & Bros, New York.
Cremin, L. A. (1970).American Education: The Colonial Experience — 1607–1783 Harper & Row, New York.
Cremin, L. A. (1980).American Education: The National Experience — 1783–1876 Harper & Row, New York.
Cremin, L. A. (1988).American Education: The Metropolitan Experience — 1876–1980 Harper & Row, New York.
Cremin, L. A. (1989).Popular Education and its Discontents Harper & Row, New York.
Curtius, E. R. (1953).European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (translated by William Trask), Bollingen, New York.
Daniels, G. H. (1967). The pure science ideal and democratic culture.Science 156: 1699–1705.
Daniels, G. H. (1968).American Science in the Age of Jackson Columbia University Press, New York.
Emerson, R. W. (1982). Selections from his journals selected and edited by Joel Porte,Emerson in His Journals. Belknap (Harvard University) Press, Cambridge.
Franklin, B. (1959). All material quoted fromThe Papers of Benjamin Franklin, edited by L. W. Labaree et al. Yale University Press, New Haven.
Graff, H. J. (1987).The Legacies of Literacy Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Greene, J. C. (1984).American Science in the Age of Jefferson Iowa State University Press, Ames.
Guralnick, S. M. (1975). Science and the Ante-Bellum American College, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
Gutman, H. G. (1977).Work, Culture, and Society Knopf, New York.
Hansen, A. O. (1926).Liberalism and Education in the Eighteenth Century Columbia University Press, New York.
Hawke, D. F. (1988).Nuts and Bolts of the Past Harper & Row, New York.
Hindle, B. (1956).The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Hofstadter, R. (1963).Anti-intellectualism in American Life Knopf, New York.
House, E. (1974).The Politics of Educational Innovation McCutchan, Berkeley.
Jefferson, T. (1984). All material quoted fromWritings, Library of America, New York.
Kaestle, C. F. (1983).Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society 1780–1860 Hill and Wang, New York.
Kasson, J. F. (1976).Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776–1900 Grossman (Viking), New York.
Katz, M. B. (1971).Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America Praeger, New York.
Kohlsted, S. G. (1990). Parlors, primers, and public schooling: Education for science in 19th-century America.Isis 81: 425–445.
Kuritz, H. (1981). The popularization of science in 19th-century America.History of Education Quarterly 21: 259–274.
Lindberg, D. C. (1992).The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context University of Chicago, Chicago.
Maclure, W. (1817).Observations on the Geology of the United States selections reprinted in Mather, K. F., and Mason, S. L. (Eds.),A Source Book in Geology, 1400–1900 Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp. 168–174.
Marx, L. (1964).The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, Oxford, New York.
Mayfield, J. (1982).The New Nation: 1800–1845 Hill & Wang, New York.
Miller, H. S. (1970).Dollars for Research: Science and its Patrons in 19th Century America University of Washington, Seattle.
Miller, P. (1964).Errand into the Wilderness Harper and Row, New York.
Novack, B. (1980).Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting 1825–1875 Thames and Hudson, London.
Oakley, F. (1992).Community of Learning: The American College and the Liberal Arts Tradition Oxford University Press, New York.
Porter, C. M. (1986).The Eagle's Nest: Natural History and American Ideas, 1812–1842 University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
Rogers, D. T. (1985). Socializing middle-class children: Institutions, fables, and work values in 19th century America. In Hiner, N. R. and Hawes, J. M. (Eds.),Growing Up in America: Children in Historical Perspective University of Illinois Press, Chicago, pp. 119–135.
Rossiter, M. W. (1982).Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.
Rudoph, F. (1977).Curriculum: A History of the Undergraduate Course of Study Since 1636. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Schlesinger, A. M., Jr. (1992).The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society Norton, New York.
Sillman, B. (1819). Introductory Remarks. American Journal of Science 1:1, p. v-vi and 1–8.
Stroud, P. T. (1992).Thomas Say: New World Naturalist University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Welter, R. (1962).Popular Education and Democratic Thought in America Columbia University Press, New York.
Whitty, G. (1985).Sociology and School Knowledge: Curriculum Theory, Research and Politics Methuen, London.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Montgomery, S.L. Science, education, and republican values: Trends of faith in America: 1750–1830. J Sci Educ Technol 2, 521–540 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00695322
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00695322