A Simplistic Tool for a Lethal Phenomenon

Abstract

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States of America was pulsating with the rhythms of a multifaceted transformation of the social fabric. This transformation, already begun in the last decades of the nineteenth century, was spurred on by a new industrialism— and, consequently, by the new dynamics of capitalist exploration— that not only brought about “a transformation in America’s economic arrangements and in its social institutions [but also] precipitated a moral crisis” (Kliebard, 1999a, p. 3). In fact, “westward expansion and the growth of industry, agriculture and population put vastly increased demands upon existing schools and required the building not only of new schools, but of whole new educational systems” (Pulliam, 1991, p. 83); in other words, “society demand[ed] much more of the schools than ever before” (Good, 1956, p. 17).