Abstract
The establishment in 1812 in New York State of a State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the appointments in 1837 of Horace Mann in Massachusetts and of Henry Barnard in Connecticut as secretaries of their respective state boards of education had laid the groundwork for what was to become the American system of public education. The New England example found imitators in other states, and by mid-century the so-called public school revival had begun to extend across the country. Only the antebellum South lagged. There it took hold during and after the 1870s. Initially the powers of state superintendents were limited to gathering and distributing information and to encouraging and persuading local and district school boards to strengthen the common schools. As time went on, however, the state superintendents’ administrative powers grew and eventually led to a nationwide decline in the control of local school boards over their district schools. For parents this meant that the further removed from their residence the decisions concerning public schooling were made and the more they were predetermined by state regulations, the less effectively could they assert their choice and preferences over their children’s education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See on this William J. Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements during the Progressive Era (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 4.
Quoted in Stanley K. Schultz, The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 269–270.
Louis R. Harlan, Separate and Unequal: Public School Campaigns and Racism in the Southern Seaboard States 1901–1915 (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 3.
Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 14. Carter Godwin Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1933), p. 28, and his The Education of the Negro prior to 1861 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1919), p. 17.
W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York: Russell and Russell, 1935), pp. 638 and 645.
See Christopher M. Span, ‘Alternative Pedagogy: The Rise of the Private Black Academy in Early Postbellum Mississippi, 1862–1870,’ in Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years oflndependentAcademies in the United States, 1727–1925, ed. Nancy Beadie and Kim Tolley (New York and London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002), pp. 211–227.
Henry Wilson, “New Departure of the Republican Party,” The Atlantic Monthly 27 (January 1871): 119–120. See also Jorgenson, The State and the Non-Public School, 1825–1925, pp. 137–138.
Otto E Kraushaar, American Nonpublic Schools: Patterns of Diversity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 14.
Joseph Schafer, “Genesis of Wisconsin’s Free High School System,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 11 (1926): 148.
See Joseph Schafer, Four Wisconsin Counties (Madison: State Historical Society, 1927), pp. 235–237.
David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 127.
See William J. Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements during the Progressive Era (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), pp. 16–18.
David Angus and Jeffrey E. Mirel, The Failed Promise of the American High School, 1890–1995 (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1999), p. 9.
and Ursula Krautkrämer, Staat und Erziehung (München: Johannes Berchmans Verlag, 1979), pp. 245–249.
See Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Der Königsberger und der Litauische Schulplan,” in Schriften zur Politik und zum Bildungswesen, in Werke, ed. Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1964), 4: 168–195.
See Karl Bungardt, Die Odysee der Lehrerschaft: Sozialgeschichte eines Standes (Hannover: Hermann Schrodel, 1965), pp. 29–30.
See Anthony J. LaVopa, Prussian Schoolteachers: Profession and Office, 1763–1848 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 123.
Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander, Der Kampf um die Schule: Bildungspolitische und Pädagogische Schriften (Berlin: Volk and Wissen, 1979), 2:41. For more information on the Prussian teachers’ role in the revolution of 1848 see Nipperdey, “Volksschule und Revolution im Vormärz,” in Politische Ideologien und Nationalstaatliche Ordnung, Festschrift für Theodor Schieder ed. Kurt Kluxen and Wolfgang J. Mommsen (München und Wien: Oldenbourg, 1968), p. 113, and Wilhelm Appens, Die pädagogischen Bewegungen des Jahres 1848 (Elberfeld: Sam. Lucas, 1917). Cf. also Franzjörg Baumgart, Zwischen Reform und Reaktion: Preußische Schulpolitik 1806–1859 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1900), pp. 144–145, 162.
Karl-Ernst Jeismann, “Die Stiehlschen Regulative,” in Dauer und Wandel der Geschichte, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus und Manfred Botzenhart (Münster: Aschendorff, 1966), p. 432.
Cf. Peter Martin Roeder, “Gemeindeschule in Staatshand: Zur Schulpolitik des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses,” Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 12 (1966): 560–561.
Adolph Diesterweg, “Die Freie Schule im Freien Staat,” in Schriften und Reden in zwei Bänden, ed. Heinrich Deiters (Berlin/Leipzig, Volk und Wissen 1950), 2: 507–511.
See on this Luise Wagner-Winterhager, Schule und Eltern in der Weimarer Republik: Untersuchungen zur Wirksamkeit der Elternbeiräte in Preußen und der Elternräte in Hamburg 1918–1922 (Weinheim und Basel: Behz Verlag, 1979), pp. 30–32.
Detlef K. Müller, “The Process of systematisation: The case of German secondary education,” in The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction, 1870–1920, ed. Detlef K. Müller, Fritz Ringer and Brian Simon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 23.
Ludwig Schacht, Über die Gleichberechtigung der Realschule I. Ordnung mit dem Gymnasium (Elberfeld: Lucas, 1878), p. 66.
Hans-Georg Herrlitz, Wulf Hopf, and Hartmut Titze, Deutsche Schulgeschichte von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart: Eine Einführung (Weinheim and München: Juventa, 1993), p. 107.
Georg Kerschensteiner, Staatsbürgerliche Erziehung der deutschen Jugend. Gekrönte Preisarbeit (Erfurt: K. Villaret, 1901).
James C. Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 158.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2006 Jurgen Herbst
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Herbst, J. (2006). The Systematization of Public Education. In: School Choice and School Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312376222_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312376222_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53428-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-312-37622-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)