Search Results

THE BURDENS AND DILEMMAS OF COMMON SCHOOLING

Terence H. McLaughlin

in Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities

Terence Mclaughlin’s essay addresses the conceptual and practical complexities involved in identifying and evaluating the nature, status, and institutional context of common (public) education in ... More

Terence Mclaughlin’s essay addresses the conceptual and practical complexities involved in identifying and evaluating the nature, status, and institutional context of common (public) education in pluralist societies. He explores some of the neglected burdens and dilemmas faced by common schools in pluralist, multicultural, and liberal–democratic societies. The potential weight and complexity of these burdens and dilemmas is reflected in Stephen Macedo’s observation that common schools give rise to questions relating to some of the ‘deepest divisions’ and ‘most intractable conflicts’ characterizing the public lives of modern states. The chapter has five sections: Section 5.1 outlines some general considerations relating to common schooling and a conception of common education, pointing out that the relationship between the two is a contingent one – the adequacy of a particular institutional arrangement, such as the common school, depends critically on the extent to which it embodies an adequate conception of common education; Section 5.2 offers a sketch of some general features of such conceptions; in Sections 5.3 and 5.4, respectively, some of the burdens and dilemmas of common schooling are explored; Section 5.5 addresses neglected questions relating to the pre-eminently practical burdens and dilemmas highlighted in the previous two sections. McLaughlin’s chapter is especially helpful in identifying a number of the most important considerations in the presumption in favour of common schools as the most suitable arrangement for advancing common education, and his essay maps the conceptual, curricular, pedagogical, and policy issues that must be addressed in clarifying and defending the role of common schools and common education in liberal–democratic societies.Less

Common Schools, Separate Schools

Eamonn Callan

in Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy

The institutionalization of political education requires thought about the kind of schooling that will realize its ends with due regard for whatever moral constraints limit what the state may do for ... More

The institutionalization of political education requires thought about the kind of schooling that will realize its ends with due regard for whatever moral constraints limit what the state may do for the sake of those ends. It is argued that the liberal state can permissibly show systematic partiality for ‘common schools’ that children from diverse social groups attend on terms of mutual respect over ‘separate schools’ that cater to students on the basis of selective ethnic or religious criteria or the like. On the other hand, there may be a cogent case for state sponsorship of separate schools during the early years of schooling if these accept the ends of liberal political education.Less

Discrimination and Religious Schooling

Eamonn Callan

in Citizenship in Diverse Societies

The normative foundations of policy on the funding of religious schools in liberal democracies are examined, using the case of Ontario, Canada, and specifically the case of Adler verses Ontario in ... More

The normative foundations of policy on the funding of religious schools in liberal democracies are examined, using the case of Ontario, Canada, and specifically the case of Adler verses Ontario in 1996, to elucidate considerations that have relevance beyond Canada. Ontario presently has state sponsorship for Catholic but no other schools, and the current dilemma is whether this should give way to a common secular educational system, or whether it should expand the range of religious schools sponsored. This dilemma is discussed in terms of discrimination, and of the values and limits of the common school.Less

The Rise of Nonsectarianism

Steven K. Green

in The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter is the first of two to discuss the legal issues surrounding the rise and development of nonsectarian public schooling in America. The controversy, called the “school question,” had two ... More

This chapter is the first of two to discuss the legal issues surrounding the rise and development of nonsectarian public schooling in America. The controversy, called the “school question,” had two interrelated issues: Protestant religious exercises (including Bible reading) and the funding of Catholic parochial schools. The chapter examines the origins and later modifications of nonsectarianism (led by Horace Mann), early Protestant-Catholic conflicts over Bible reading and funding (including the impact of nativism), and several early legal cases involving funding and Bible reading. The chapter ends with a discussion of the most important Bible reading case of the century, which arose in Cincinnati and concluded with the Ohio Supreme Court banning the religious exercises.Less

Conclusion: “[M]ingle with Us as Americans”: Religious Pluralism after the Founding

Chris Beneke

in Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism

The conclusion delineates the 19th-century boundaries of American religious pluralism. Those limits emerged most clearly in the persistence of anti-Semitism, the violence inflicted upon Mormons in ... More

The conclusion delineates the 19th-century boundaries of American religious pluralism. Those limits emerged most clearly in the persistence of anti-Semitism, the violence inflicted upon Mormons in western New York, Illinois, and Missouri, and the vitriolic common school debates of 1840 and 1841, which pitted New York’s Roman Catholic leaders against the Protestant-dominated Public School Society. In the case of the Mormons and the Catholics, especially, the 18th-century formula of equal rights for private worship and public inclusion failed. Anonymous living in the increasingly populous cities and the vast expanses of cheap land in the west allowed religious groups to avoid integration. Meanwhile, the continued dominance of Calvinist Protestantism made such isolation attractive. Yet, an important precedent had already been set. The success that early Americans had in maintaining civil peace and encouraging cooperative endeavors between different religious groups provided a reassuring template for future encounters with diversity.Less

Education: America

Emily Zackin

in Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places: Why State Constitutions Contain America's Positive Rights

This chapter examines the campaigns to add education rights to state constitutions, with particular emphasis on how the common school movement was able to establish the states' constitutional duty to ... More

This chapter examines the campaigns to add education rights to state constitutions, with particular emphasis on how the common school movement was able to establish the states' constitutional duty to provide education. The leaders of the common school movement insisted that government had a moral duty to expand opportunities for children whose parents could not otherwise afford to educate them, and that state legislatures should be legally obligated to fulfill it. This movement's central claim was that the value of constitutional rights lay in their potential to promote policy changes by forcing legislatures to pass the kinds of redistributive policies they tended to avoid. The chapter considers the evidence for an American positive-rights tradition that exists primarily at the state level and discusses Congress's motive for the creation of constitutional rights as a case of entrenchment. It argues that education provisions found in state constitutions are positive rights.Less

CIVIC FRIENDSHIP AND DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION

David Blacker

in Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities

This is the third of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the ... More

This is the third of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. David Blacker’s essay on civic friendship and democratic education develops a Rawlsian conception of civic friendship, the scaffolding of which is necessarily provided by the wide range of comprehensive conceptions of the good that characterize democratic societies. Thus, Blacker argues, a democratic civic education ‘allows citizens to embrace democracy on their own terms, drawing support for democracy’s requisite political conceptions from the perspectives of citizens’ many different secular and/or religious comprehensive doctrines’. For Blacker, a conception of civic friendship that is friendly to citizens’ multiple comprehensive doctrines also entails a substantial lowering of the ‘wall of separation’ between church and state so that courts might be more willing than they currently are to allow the use of state funds to support religious groups, in particular where these groups perform functions within public (common) schools that converge with public interests. The essay concludes by proposing and defending two American educational policy initiatives that are consistent with Blacker’s politically liberal ideal of civic friendship – the revival of a ‘school stamps’ plan first proposed in the 1970s, and a modified version of a ‘clergy in the schools’ programme recently struck down by a federal circuit court in Texas.Less

SHOULD WE TEACH PATRIOTIC HISTORY?

Harry Brighouse

in Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities

Harry Brighouse’s essay concludes Part I of the book by taking up one aspect of the task of clarifying the role of common education, by applying it to the teaching of patriotism in public (common) ... More

Harry Brighouse’s essay concludes Part I of the book by taking up one aspect of the task of clarifying the role of common education, by applying it to the teaching of patriotism in public (common) schools. He asks whether liberal and cosmopolitan values are compatible with a common education aimed at fostering patriotic attachment to the nation. He examines numerous arguments recently developed to justify fostering patriotism in common schools from a liberal–democratic perspective, and finds them all wanting. However, even if liberal–democratic arguments for teaching patriotism could be found that withstand the criticisms he advances, Brighouse argues that common schools should avoid using history as the vehicle for fostering patriotic loyalty, since even the most honest, clear-sighted, unsentimental attempts to teach national history are likely to degrade and undermine the other purposes that teaching history properly has. The chapter proceeds as follows: Section 6.1, discusses briefly the justifications of patriotism and the further arguments that patriotism is something that should be taught to children in school – and in particular the argument that history is an appropriate vehicle for teaching it; Section 2 casts doubt on the arguments for patriotism and even more doubt on the idea that it should be taught; Section 6.3 argues that history is a discipline particularly inappropriate for conveying patriotic feeling; Section 6.4 concludes.Less

Historical Developments

James L. Heft S.M.

in Catholic High Schools: Facing the New Realities

This chapter examines several historical and cultural developments necessary for understanding the current challenges that face educators in today's Catholic schools. During the colonial period ... More

This chapter examines several historical and cultural developments necessary for understanding the current challenges that face educators in today's Catholic schools. During the colonial period religion and education were seamlessly woven together. By the middle and late nineteenth century, however, waves of immigrants posed new threats to Americans who thought that the greatest need was to “Americanize” the “unwashed” immigrants. Many Americans, therefore, welcomed the common school movement, begun by Horace Mann (1796–1859), a Unitarian minister, who designed the schools to provide a common socialization for all citizens. Mann's educational program promoted a generic Protestantism, beginning with daily readings from the King James Bible. In response, the Catholic bishops felt they had to establish their own educational system. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the high school movement gained great momentum, but had little effect on most Catholic high schools, that is, until the 1960s, when it became more and more difficult to sustain Catholic schools in the ways they had been sustained for most of the first half of the twentieth century.Less

The Rise of Nonsectarian Public Education

Steven K. Green

in The Bible, the School, and the Constitution: The Clash that Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine

This chapter traces the rise of nonsectarian education in America. It describes the original impulse for a religious-moral basis for public education and how that concept evolved through the first ... More

This chapter traces the rise of nonsectarian education in America. It describes the original impulse for a religious-moral basis for public education and how that concept evolved through the first half of the nineteenth century. It discusses Horace Mann's contribution to nonsectarian instruction of how he refined the concept from teaching common Protestant doctrines to emphasizing more universal religious values through the use of unmediated Bible reading. The chapter also considers the initial objections of orthodox Protestants and then Catholics to unmediated Bible reading, and how Protestants gradually acceded to a less doctrinaire form of nonsectarianism. It concludes with analyses of the first court decisions upholding the religious practices.Less

Schooling Appalachia

Samantha NeCamp

in Literacy in the Mountains: Community, Newspapers, and Writing in Appalachia

This chapter examines schooling in the Appalachian region. Schooling features in many of the correspondent columns as well as in pieces written by the editors. In particular, the newspapers ... More

This chapter examines schooling in the Appalachian region. Schooling features in many of the correspondent columns as well as in pieces written by the editors. In particular, the newspapers illustrate that a thriving industry of ad hoc private education institutions was active in eastern Kentucky, a fact seldom recognized in histories of the area. While modern studies of schooling and literacy frequently cite public school data to suggest that Kentuckians were not supportive of schooling, the newspapers demonstrate that many of these supposedly unschooled children were in fact receiving an education from privately run institutions that some of the editors touted as superior to public schools. The newspapers also demonstrate vibrant community support for education.Less

Race, Space, and Educational Opportunity

in Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America

Boston was the first in the nation to craft a system of common schools open to boys and girls, allocating more of its resources to public education than any other American city in the antebellum ... More

Boston was the first in the nation to craft a system of common schools open to boys and girls, allocating more of its resources to public education than any other American city in the antebellum period. African Americans benefited from this educational commitment in a lot of ways. The New England seaport ostensibly provided public education to African Americans free of charge — aside, of course, from their tax contributions. And unlike their counterparts in New Haven, Boston's white population did not resort to violence to suppress black access to education. Nevertheless, white Bostonians' loyalty to the promise of public schooling broke down because they were not comfortable with racial integration. When two groups of petitioners opposed the construction of a schoolhouse for black children, they did not ask the city to exclude African Americans from public schools altogether. To better understand the petitioners' rhetorical strategy, it is helpful to look briefly to the literature on race and homeownership in the twentieth century, when struggles over race, city space, and property became more frequent.Less

Walled Gardens: Friends’ Schools

Sarah Crabtree

in Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution

Chapter Three explores the disagreement among Quakers after the War for Independence regarding how to respond to the new political realities in the United States. Friends differed as to how they ... More

Chapter Three explores the disagreement among Quakers after the War for Independence regarding how to respond to the new political realities in the United States. Friends differed as to how they should or if they even could continue to be “a people within a people” within the context of a nation-state rather than an empire. Some counseled further withdrawal from worldly affairs, arguing that Friends needed to purify themselves from the corrupting forces of nationalism and patriotism, while others, saw an opportunity to influence the new government and urged engagement. For a brief period, Friends found compromise in the education of their youngest members, employing the Biblical metaphor of a “walled garden” in order to reconcile these two stratagems. Friends' schools were to be stationed in remote locations, far away from both the corrupting influence of the world and the watchful eye of the state. At the same time, however, these institutions were to practice a pedagogy that encouraged and trained students to become involved in benevolent organizations and reform movements.Less

beyond Hume and Wolff

Udo Thiel

in The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume

The Conclusion outlines the general themes and development that characterize eighteenth-century debates about self-consciousness and personal identity after Hume, Wolff and his followers and critics ... More

The Conclusion outlines the general themes and development that characterize eighteenth-century debates about self-consciousness and personal identity after Hume, Wolff and his followers and critics (the details will be dealt with in a sequel to this volume, entitled The Enlightened Subject). There is a rich variety of views and arguments, but four thematic groups can be identified. First, from the 1740s to the 1770s the notion of feeling becomes prominent (Condillac, Rousseau), emphasizing the immediacy by which we relate to our own self and personal identity. Second, there are attempts by materialist philosophers to deal with these issues– mainly thinkers of the 1770s and 1780s, including for example Joseph Priestley. Third, there is the Scottish School of Common Sense, most importantly Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart in the 1780s and 90s - here, personal identity is thought of as a necessary condition of thought and action. Fourth, there is Kant and the debates about Kant at the end of the century - with thinkers such as Karl Leonhard Reinhold whose contributions can help to illuminate and critically evaluate the Kantian as well as the earlier approaches to the issues of self-consciousness and personal identity.Less

The Common School Awakening in Ohio

David Komline

in The Common School Awakening: Religion and the Transatlantic Roots of American Public Education

This chapter narrates the key developments in the movement to systematize and professionalize Ohio’s schools, which culminated in 1837 with the creation of the office of the superintendent of common ... More

This chapter narrates the key developments in the movement to systematize and professionalize Ohio’s schools, which culminated in 1837 with the creation of the office of the superintendent of common schools. In many ways, Ohio resembled Massachusetts: religious reformers pointed to the example of Prussia in a successful campaign to introduce legislative change. In other respects, however, the case of Ohio differed. One important contrast between the course of the Common School Awakening in the two states involves the scope of the legislative victories achieved in each. In Massachusetts, the board of education and state-sponsored normal schools that came into existence in the 1830s continued largely unchanged for decades. In Ohio, however, the awakening did not result in a state-sponsored normal school and the superintendent office that it created passed out of existence when its first occupant resigned.Less

Rights, segregation and discrimination

Karin Fischer

in Schools and the Politics of Religion and Diversity in the Republic of Ireland: Separate But Equal?

Chapter 6 discusses current structural trends in the education system from the perspective of inclusion, civic and social equality, looking at the diversification of school types and the involvement ... More

Chapter 6 discusses current structural trends in the education system from the perspective of inclusion, civic and social equality, looking at the diversification of school types and the involvement of private interests and their consequences in terms of school segregation, continuing discrimination and the issue of democratic legitimacy in the whole system. Until now the Irish State has worked to preserve legal forms of discrimination through exemptions to equality legislation, ultimately subordinating the rights of all individual members of the school community to those of particular groups (mainly religious bodies) acting as private patrons, with the exception of the Education and Training Boards. The human rights of children, including the right to freedom of conscience, have been ignored by the Irish State, despite calls from various United Nations Committees and from local groups to eliminate all discrimination in admission policies and within schools. Competing understandings of the notion of community (cultural/religious vs local) along with the market-based idea of parental choice, have contributed to maintaining school segregation along religious, social and even indirectly ‘racial’ lines, going against the idea of a local common school for all children upheld notably by the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation.Less

The Campaign for the Common Schools: The Enthusiasts, the Indifferent, and the Opposition

David Nasaw

in Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States

It was easier for the reformers to secure a monopoly on the meaning and practice of Protestant and republican common schooling than it was to attract or compel attendance at their common schools. ... More

It was easier for the reformers to secure a monopoly on the meaning and practice of Protestant and republican common schooling than it was to attract or compel attendance at their common schools. The reformers had formulated the solution to all social problems, or so they believed. They had designed the ultimate institution for the socialization of American youth. Their task was now to catalyze public opinion and raise public monies to pay for its operation. It has been assumed that the reformers were the primary agents in the establishment and selling of the common school movement. This may or may not be true. What is certainly the case, however, is that without the direct and continual assistance of their friends, allies, and supporters from the business world, the reformers would have accomplished very little indeed. Though the most effective of ideologists, they were incapable by themselves of bringing about substantive reforms, either in the schools or in any other social institution. As Alexander Field has suggested, “Perhaps it is not Mann, after all, who deserves the full-size statue in front of the Massachusetts State House, complete with the inscription, ‘Father of the American Public School.’ ” For Mann would never have become secretary to the board if not first nominated by Edmund Dwight, a wealthy cotton textile manufacturer who persuaded Mann to take the job and supplemented his salary by $500 a year. Dwight was not the only successful businessman to support the common school crusade. The state boards, in Massachusetts as elsewhere, were chosen from a relatively small group of wealthy merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, and clergy. The lawyers and clergy invariably catered to the manufacturers and merchants, making the occupational diversity on the boards much less significant than might appear. It is impossible to know who the primary agents of reform were—the businessmen behind the scenes or the reformers on the front lines. What is known, however, is that the two groups worked well together, the reformers supplying the theoretical arguments and propaganda, and the businessmen, the money and political clout. Less

The Civic Participation Crisis—and the Civic Empowerment Gap

Michael A. Rebell

in Flunking Democracy: Schools, Courts, and Civic Participation

This chapter tells how from the first, preparing students for capable citizenship has been the primary purpose of public education in the United States, and then documents how civic instruction in ... More

This chapter tells how from the first, preparing students for capable citizenship has been the primary purpose of public education in the United States, and then documents how civic instruction in the schools—and civic participation in society at large—has markedly declined since the 1950s. Our young people are becoming increasingly ignorant of the basic institutions of American government, ill-equipped to engage in deliberative discussions, and increasingly unmotivated to engage in basic civic activities like voting, volunteering, and attending public meetings. The chapter also details why students of color and white students from working-class and low-income families are even more alienated from the nation’s civic culture and even less prepared for civic participation than are the majority of more affluent white students.Less

The First Era of School Reform: War, Panic, and Popular Education

Mark Boonshoft

in Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic

This chapter explains how, during the 1810s and 1820s, a more effective political opposition to aristocratic education formed. In different ways, the “Jeffersonian Revolution” of 1800, the War of ... More

This chapter explains how, during the 1810s and 1820s, a more effective political opposition to aristocratic education formed. In different ways, the “Jeffersonian Revolution” of 1800, the War of 1812, and the Panic of 1819 all helped bolster the critique of academies, and built popular support for public common schools. Historians often skip over this “first era of school reform” and look instead at Horace Mann and the common school reformers of the 1830s. But it was during this period that many northern states started investing in common schools, and also revamping academies and colleges to serve a new educational vision. These institutional changes were all geared toward overthrowing aristocratic education and instead trying to create widespread informed citizenship. But as education came to be seen as an important path to citizenship, the impulse to segregate public schools grew, confining their benefits primarily to white men.Less