Traditions of American education

About this book

The first lecture, dealing with the period from the beginnings of colonization to the achievement of independence, is derived essentially from American Education: The Colonial Experience, which was published in 1970. My theme there is the successful transplantation of European educational institutions to the New World and their gradual modification under novel conditions. The second lecture, dealing with the first century of nationhood, is drawn from American Education: The National Experience, which has been fully drafted but not yet published. My theme there is the development of an authentic American vernacular in education, expressly intended to advance a popular paideia compounded of democratic hopes, evangelical pieties, and millennial expectations. And the third lecture, dealing with the period since Reconstruction, is based on American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, which has been substantially sketched but not yet fully drafted. My theme there is the transformation and proliferation of American educative agencies under the influence of industrialization, urbanization, technological innovation, and transnational expansion. As in the larger work, I have defined education broadly, as the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, evoke, or acquire knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, or sensibilities, as well as any outcomes of that effort. And I have given particular attention in the lectures to the changing configurations of education at different times in American history and to the various ways in which individuals have interacted with those configurations. The more general theory underlying all this is explicated in the note on problematics and sources appended to the lectures and is further elaborated in Public Education, which may be regarded as a companion to the present volume. - Preface.