Dictionary:

education

  (ĕj'ə-kā'shən)

1. The act or process of educating or being educated.
2. The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process.
3. A program of instruction of a specified kind or level: driver education; a college education.
4. The field of study that is concerned with the pedagogy of teaching and learning.
5. An instructive or enlightening experience: Her work in the inner city was a real education.

noun

1. The act, process, or art of imparting knowledge and skill: instruction, pedagogics, pedagogy, schooling, teaching, training, tuition, tutelage, tutoring. See teach/learn.
2. Known facts, ideas, and skill that have been imparted: erudition, instruction, knowledge, learning, scholarship, science. See knowledge/ignorance.

Definition: instruction, development of knowledge
Antonyms: ignorance

The act or process of imparting or acquiring knowledge, skill, or judgment.

Massachusetts enacted America's first compulsory education law in 1852. State statutes and constitutional provisions governed most of public elementary and secondary education for the next century. Although the federal government's role in elementary and secondary education has increased over time (e.g., No Child Left Behind Act, 2001), it remains far more pronounced in higher education. Historically, few education disputes resulted in litigation, and state courts generally resolved those that did on relatively narrow grounds. The involvement of the United States Supreme Court in public school litigation was rare, accelerating only in the period after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Compulsory Schooling and Socialization

The constitutional framework for modern education cases was established in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), and Farrington v. Tokushige (1927). In Pierce, the Court held that Oregon could not constitutionally require all parents of school‐age children to send their offspring to public schools. Relying on substantive due process and the natural rights of parents to raise their children, the Court, while recognizing the legitimacy of compulsory attendance laws, held that the private school alternative may not be abolished. Pierce has never been repudiated by the Court, though some commentators argue that it would rest today more persuasively on First Amendment grounds. They maintain that a state monopoly over elementary and secondary education would present a danger of indoctrinating youth to particular beliefs, thereby undermining the ability of citizens to formulate and articulate their own points of view. The “Pierce compromise” requires the state allow parents to choose private schools, but it does not require the state to defray the additional costs of such schooling.

Meyer and Farrington shed additional light on Pierce. In those cases, the Court held that the states may not regulate private education in such an intrusive manner as to convert private schools into public schools in all but name. The state must allow private schools reasonable latitude in shaping the curriculum.

The Court has recognized only one limited exception to the proposition that all children may be required to attend public school or a reasonably regulated private school. In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Court held that a Wisconsin law, requiring all children to attend public or private school until age sixteen, violated the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause as applied to Amish parents and children (see Religion). The Amish believed that public high schools introduced their children to modern values that were antithetical to their religious beliefs. Balancing this free exercise claim against the state's interest in preparing all children for adult citizenship, nurturing economic self‐sufficiency, and stamping out ignorance, the Court held that minimal education after age fourteen (or the eighth grade) was sufficient to achieve the state's objectives.

Taken together these cases stand for the proposition that there are constitutional limits to the state's role in socializing children in private and public schools. With respect to private schools, the Court has held that the state support of parochial schools violates the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment unless the funding has a clear secular purpose, the primary effect is not to advance religion, and there is no excessive entanglement between church and state (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971; Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 1973). While parents have the constitutional right to seek to inculcate religion in private schools, state financial support of that inculcation violates the constitutional ban on establishment of religion.

The application of the Establishment Clause to a multitude of state efforts to channel funds to religious schools has been chaotic. For example, in Wolman v. Walter (1977), the Court disapproved of public funding for transportation for field trips and the load of instructional materials although it had previously approved the provision of funds for bus fares and the loaning of textbooks (Everson v. Board of Education, 1947; Board of Education v. Allen, 1968). In Committee for the Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Regan (1980), the Court permitted state subsidies to private religious schools for particular secular programs (testing and taking attendance), while in Mueller v. Allen (1983), then Justice William H. Rehnquist suggested that benefits to parents of children in public and private schools (tax deductions for tuition, transportation, and textbook expenses) did not impermissibly advance religion despite the Nyquist decision. Establishment Clause jurisprudence in the education context gained more clarity when the Court, in Zelman v. Simmons‐Harris (2002), concluded that a publicly funded school voucher programs can include religious schools. The Zelman opinion emphasizes that public funding finding its way into religious schools through a tuition voucher program flows from private, independent decisions of schoolchildren and their parents and, consequently, does not constitute a state endorsement of religion.

In the public sphere, the Court has held that it is unconstitutional for public schools to seek to indoctrinate students to religion, though teachers may teach about religion in its historical and social context. School prayer and some forms of moments of silence are not permissible (Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963; Wallace v. Jaffree, 1985), and a state may not require the teaching of creationism or a balanced curriculum between creationism and evolution (Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968; Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987). In this context, the Establishment Clause acts as a substantive limitation on the messages that public schools may convey to students. Conversely, lower courts have held that curricula and textbooks emphasizing secular values do not constitute an unconstitutional establishment of a religion or a violation of the Free Exercise Clause (Smith v. Board of School Commissioners, 1987; Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education, 1987).

Student Rights

Numerous Supreme Court cases, mostly decided under the speech clause of the First Amendment, bear on the constitutional limits on socialization in public schools. The earliest case is West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), in which the Court held that students may not be compelled to salute the flag and to affirm beliefs they do not hold. Public school officials have a legitimate interest in educating students to their citizenship responsibilities and the political culture (Ambach v. Norwick, 1979), but Barnette limits the means of accomplishing these objectives.

In 1969 the Court, reacting to the assertion of students' civil rights during the Vietnam era protests, held in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that “state‐operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism” (p. 511). Students may engage in expressive activities on campus so long as school authorities cannot reasonably forecast that “substantial disruption” of school activities will result (p. 513). The students' right of expression is limited by the state's legitimate interest in carrying on its educational functions.

The Tinker standard is not applicable to vulgar or offensive speech (Bethel School District v. Fraser, 1986). And while Tinker protects the personal expression of students, it does not protect their speech within curricular activities—for example, the articles they write as staff members of a school newspaper operated as part of the curriculum (Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 1988). Tinker also does not apply to the expressive activities of the school itself. For example, a majority of the justices appear to embrace the proposition that library books may be removed for good faith educational reasons, including efforts to eliminate vulgar or obscene books, but school officials may not do so if their purpose is to impose an official orthodoxy or ideology (Board of Education v. Pico, 1982).

Due Process Protections

The Supreme Court has afforded due process protection (e.g., hearings) to suspended or expelled students and held that the Fourth Amendment limits the methods that school officials may use to gather evidence of infractions (Gross v. Lopez, 1975; New Jersey v. T.L.O., 1985). Due process guarantees, however, run only to disciplinary sanctions and not to academic decisions such as grades (Board of Curators v. Horowitz, 1979; Regents of University of Michigan v. Ewing, 1985) (see Due Process, Procedural).

Equality of Opportunity

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court construed the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to forbid the deliberate assignments of students by race to segregated public schools (see Segregation, De Jure; Separate but Equal Doctrine). Once such discrimination has been found there is an obligation to take affirmative steps to eliminate the vestiges of such discrimination and to establish a unitary school system (Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 1968). Neighborhood assignment of school children, resulting in continued segregation of the races, is impermissible if it is still tainted by prior acts of discrimination (Swann v. Charlotte‐Mecklenburg Board of Education, 1971). Unless there is evidence of interdistrict violations, the desegregation remedy is limited to the specific school district implicated in the wrongs, and metropolitan remedies are not permissible (Milliken v. Bradley, 1974). The typical remedy seeks to achieve racial balance in the schools in the district. The district must comply, in good faith, with the desegregation order for a reasonable period of time before the decree may be dissolved (Oklahoma City Board of Education v. Dowell, 1991).

The Court has construed the Equal Protection Clause as placing a substantial burden of proof on school authorities to demonstrate the necessity of discrimination by sex or gender (Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 1982; U.S. v. Virginia, 1996). This constitutional approach is bolstered by Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, prohibiting many forms of sex discrimination in public schools (Cohen v. Brown, 1996).

In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the Court held that education is not a fundamental interest under the Equal Protection Clause and that discrimination based on the wealth of the school district in which a student attends school is not a suspect classification. It upheld state school financing plans that result in unequal expenditures per student because of the varying local property tax bases of school districts. A denial of all educational opportunity, based on an absolute inability to afford a tuition charge made by a school district, however, is a violation of equal protection (Plyer v. Doe, 1982).

See also Fundamental Rights; Police Power.

Bibliography

• Tyell van Geel, The Courts and American Education Law (1987).
• Richard Kluger, Simple Justice (1977).
• Mark G. Yudof, When Government Speaks (1983).
• Mark G. Yudof, David L. Kirp, and Betsy Levin, Educational Policy and the Law, 3rd ed. (1992)

— Mark G. Yudof

For more information on education, visit Britannica.com.

[For education in the Middle Ages see Scholasticism.] The history of French education since the Renaissance falls into three phases. Under the ancien régime, it belonged to a cultural domain largely controlled by the Catholic church. Between the 1789 Revolution and the early 20th c. the expansion of schooling as part of the social apparatus of an industrializing nation was accompanied by intense conflict between the Church and the secular, centralizing State. Since World War I attention has concentrated on breaking down the barriers of class and gender, to substitute a unified system for one in which élite and mass education formed separate spheres. Throughout these phases, the use of education to impose a common set of values may be seen as a characteristically French emphasis.

I. The Ancien Régime

The early history of popular education is difficult to separate from that of literacy, which spread slowly and patchily, especially among the rural population. Petites écoles giving a rudimentary education were left to local initiative, and came under religious superintendence. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation gave them a marked stimulus. While Protestants laid special stress on reading the Bible, Catholics relied on education to evangelize the countryside, combat heresy, and instil new devotional disciplines. Occasional support was forthcoming from the State, but the real work was done by the local clergy, by charitable individuals, and by religious orders like the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes founded by Jean-Baptiste de la Salle. As with literacy, there were striking regional variations within France, and by 1789 high levels of school attendance existed north and east of the ‘line from Saint-Malo to Geneva’. But even within literate areas, large numbers escaped schooling altogether; schools were most highly developed in towns, and more likely to be attended by boys than girls.

At the popular level, institutional schooling was slow to replace informal means of socializing children. For the social élite, however, a standard pattern of humanist secondary education in collèges and universities was established in the late 16th c. The Jesuits had the leading role, but religious orders like the Oratorians were also active, and there were Protestant colleges in the early years [see also Port-Royal]. Latin was at the heart of this education, which sought to train pupils in the written and oral skills of rhetoric, and to immerse them in a timeless world where the standards of beauty, truth, and conduct taught by the classical authors were fused with the Christian faith. This model also prevailed in the residential colleges which were attached to universities and prepared younger students for their degrees in arts, colleges which were especially numerous and powerful in Paris. The university system inherited from the Middle Ages expanded in the 16th and 17th c. as the lay professional faculties of law and medicine came to enjoy equal prestige with theology. But by the 18th c., although the universities' social role remained important (recent research has done something to rehabilitate their intellectual reputation), their academic life had become stagnant, with ossified teaching and examining procedures. They failed to contribute creatively to Enlightenment thought, remaining dominated by religious orthodoxy when the French élite was rejecting the direction of the Church.

The colleges and universities had a special appeal for those urban social groups—noblesse de robe and bourgeoisie—whose aspirations centred on legal training and access to public offices and professions, though they also attracted pupils from more modest backgrounds aiming at the clergy. The older nobility still favoured an education stressing gentlemanly and military accomplishments, combining the college with private education through tutors. A domestic ideal was also preferred in girls' education, which was largely in the hands of religious orders; convent schools cultivated a family atmosphere, and did not copy the intellectual rigour of the boys' colleges.

2. 1750-1914

a. Reform and Revolution. In the mid-18th c. new ideas about childhood and the formation of the personality, as expressed notably in Rousseau's Émile, brought a reaction against the stereotyped forms of élite training. Like other leading figures of the Enlightenment, Rousseau was ambivalent towards the education of the masses. But the Enlightenment belief in rational social reform stimulated thinking about national systems of education directed by the State. The closing of the Jesuit Colleges in 1762 brought upheaval, and the 1789 Revolution made the crisis more general, as the revenues of the Church were confiscated, religious orders dissolved, and priests expelled. The 24 universities then existing were abolished in 1793, and schools survived with difficulty. The 1790s saw several far-reaching reform plans, notably that of Condorcet, but political instability and lack of money meant that little was achieved. The écoles centrales (1795), secondary schools on a radical new model, were the most interesting innovation. It was only after Napoleon seized power and restored the Church that the fortunes of education revived, though he was content to leave influence over the masses to the clergy, and concentrated on the training of officers and bureaucrats. The new bourgeois élite was to have a secular ethos, and ecclesiastical influence was excluded from the ‘university’ created in 1808—the centralized corporation of administrators and teachers. Napoleon's administrative structure, including the grouping of departments into regional académies headed by recteurs, was to prove long-lasting.

b. Élite Education. Lycées replaced the écoles centrales in 1802. Supplemented by municipal colleges in smaller towns, they followed a standard curriculum leading to the new baccalauréat, returning to the humanist traditions of the colleges whose buildings they often occupied. Latin now shared the honours with Greek, French literature, mathematics, and philosophy (taught in the final year); élite culture remained deeply marked by an emphasis on analytical clarity and verbal expression. This culture générale became a badge of bourgeois status, but one angled towards the professions and the bureaucracy rather than industry and commerce. There were periodic attempts to introduce science and other modern subjects, but only in 1902 were alternative paths to the baccalauréat given equal status.

Since the lycées gave a complete liberal education, the demand for higher education was limited. Instead of restoring the universities, Napoleon created separate faculties; the vocational law and medical schools flourished, but letters and science attracted few students. The ambitious preferred the grandes écoles, specialized schools which recruited through competitive examinations. In the 19th c. their numbers were limited, the École Polytechnique and the École Normale Supérieure being the most distinguished. Later, grandes écoles multiplied, particularly in commerce and engineering. Their entrance examinations required intensive preparation, especially in mathematics, and the Paris lycées specialized in this task—part of the progressive concentration of educational and scientific institutions in the capital. Alongside the grandes écoles, the faculties underwent significant reform and expansion under the Third Republic. Germany's victory in 1870-1 was attributed to her intellectual and scientific superiority, and the German universities became the model for the reform policy directed by Louis Liard. The provincial faculties were developed with an eye to local industrial needs, the Sorbonne was rebuilt, laboratories and research institutions were founded, and the faculties of letters and science acquired a new clientele of full-time students, now including women. Reform culminated in 1896 with the constitution of 15 universities, and the system thus established changed little before the 1960s.

Another achievement of the Third Republic was the creation of lycées for girls (1880), though the curricula for boys and girls remained different until the 1920s (and it was not until the 1960s that mixed secondary education became general). The girls' lycées were a challenge to the Church, which previously dominated the field, and were accompanied by attacks on Catholic secondary schools for boys, which had revived in the 19th c. despite Napoleon's legal restrictions. Republicans saw Catholic institutions for the élite (which included Catholic faculties from 1875) as dangerously divisive and anti-modern, and it was true that Catholic colleges had a social cachet which appealed to the nobility and the more conservative bourgeoisie.

c. Popular Education. Anticlericalism was fundamental to republican policy on popular education. The lois Ferry, which made education free (1881) and compulsory (1882), have usually been seen as a turning-point, but they really marked the consolidation of a long development. Every government after 1815 encouraged the provision and improvement of schools, in co-operation with the Church and local authorities. The loi Guizot of 1833 required every commune to provide a public school, and created departmental écoles normales for training teachers. Guizot himself was typical in combining religious and humanitarian motives with the idea of social control, looking to the schools to moralize the masses and provide social stability. The loi Falloux of 1850 reinforced the influence of the Church, and Napoleon III made only limited legislative changes despite the modernizing character of his regime. Yet throughout these years schooling was steadily extending, as its social and economic value became more evident. Regional disparities were evened out, the education of girls was no longer neglected, and school attendance became part of the accepted pattern of childhood among both peasants and urban workers. Ferry's reforms filled the gaps, and created a well-financed national system.

They also reflected the passionate republican belief, already evident in 1848, that education was the instrument of democracy, social progress, and popular emancipation. The positivist creed of science provided an ideology for anticlericalism, and Ferry enforced the principle of state neutrality in religion (laïcité): religious instruction was replaced by ‘civic’ teaching, and only lay persons could teach in state schools. The reforms of the Third Republic were also inspired by nationalism, using the school to break down regional loyalties and form French citizens; this entailed the imposition of standard French, and a war against patois and non-French languages. The village school was one of the most characteristic institutions of the Third Republic, which had no more zealous servants than the elementary teachers (instituteurs and institutrices). On the other side of the Church-State battle, Catholics denounced the ‘atheist’ state schools, and devoted much energy to building up their own, especially in devout areas like the west. In the heated political atmosphere after the Dreyfus Affair, the republicans attempted to eliminate even Catholic private schools by banning religious orders; tensions were reduced after World War I, but only in the 1950s was a compromise reached by admitting Catholic schools to state subsidy.

3. Since World War I

Élite and popular education developed as separate, self-contained systems, reflecting the rigid class structure. Universities and lycées were strongholds of liberal values, symbolizing the principles of merit and talent asserted in 1789 against birth and privilege, but they had no direct connection with elementary schools, and although there were many individual success stories, the channels of social mobility were narrow. The advent of the Third Republic brought no substantial change, and before 1914 only about 3 per cent of the age-group received secondary education, 1 per cent reaching the baccalauréat. But after World War I a new impulse towards democratization created the ideal of the école unique. Instead of being divided between free elementary and fee-paying secondary sectors, each serving a wide age-range, schools would be organized in successive stages, allocating pupils to different types of secondary education according to ability. This programme was accomplished in stages between the 1920s and 1960s, but gradual reform was then overtaken by an educational ‘explosion’, driven partly by a rising birth-rate, partly by a growing demand for qualifications. More pupils staying on at school meant a surge in demand for higher education, and the consequent overcrowding helped provoke the student disturbances of May 1968. The short-term response to these was to subdivide large universities and found new ones (producing more than 60 separate institutions), and to allow more autonomy from the state; in the long term, governments accepted the need to move from élite to mass higher education. For similar reasons, the barriers within secondary education were dismantled, and schools were reorganized into two stages, the collèges common to all, and the lycées for advanced pupils, giving various forms of technical and vocational as well as academic education. The baccalauréat expanded accordingly. But the system remained highly competitive, with the grandes écoles retaining their place at its apex. As sociologists like Bourdieu pointed out, bourgeois privilege could survive within formal meritocracy, and the power of education to mould the social structure was less than idealists over the centuries had supposed.

[Robert Anderson]

Bibliography

• L.-H. Parias (ed.), Histoire générale de l'enseignement et de l'éducation en France, new edn. (1983)
• R. Chartier, M.-M. Compère, and D. Julia, L'Éducation en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (1976)
• A. Prost, Histoire de l'enseignement en France, 1800-1967, 6th edn. (1986)

Americans have long invested importance in education as a means of social improvement and individual fulfillment. Education has entailed both formal instruction in schools, universities, and other institutions, and informal learning in a variety of settings. Schools were respected institutions early in American history, and their significance has grown with time. Education and schooling have also been at the center of social and political conflict, often over issues of status and inequality. Schools eventually became instruments of government social policy, utilized to offset historic inequities and to help achieve social justice. Education also contributed human capital to the nation's economy. In the nineteenth century, reformers focused on training reliable workers; in the twentieth century, schools prepared men and women for office and professional employment. At the same time, education has been a vital element of social and economic mobility for generations of Americans.

Historically, the primary schools were the objects of the nation's first great era of education reform. Next came secondary schools, which grew most rapidly during the early twentieth century, and colleges and universities expanded notably in the years following World War II. Schools at all levels have been indispensable to the formation of a national identity for Americans throughout history. From the very earliest stages of the new republic, schools have helped to foster loyalty to the principles of democratic governance, and to the particular tenets of American nationalism. They also have served as a forum for debate over the evolution of these principles.

Education in the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

The cultivation of skills and the transmission of culture were major concerns of English settlers in North America, evident almost immediately upon their arrival. This was apparent in New England, where early laws called for establishing schools and for educating young men—and eventually young women too. But schools were established elsewhere, along with colleges, to provide avenues of formal education. Schools were fragile institutions in the colonial world, existing alongside older and more familiar agencies of education, the family and the church. Even though there was a high level of rhetorical commitment to formal education in certain colonies, only a minority of youth were "educated" by today's standards.

New England's colonists placed special value on the necessity of moral and religious leadership, and preparing a cadre of educated leaders was considered essential. An early sign of this was the decision to establish Boston Latin School in 1635 and Harvard College a year later. In the wake of religious debates and schisms, other colleges were started in nearby Connecticut (Yale, 1701), Rhode Island (Brown, 1764), and New Hampshire (Dart-mouth, 1769). These were small institutions, enrolling fewer than a hundred students, and hardly represented a well-developed education system.

In 1647, Massachusetts enacted a law requiring towns of fifty families to establish a school, to confound the "Old Deluder Satan" in his never-ending quest to lead Christians astray. Connecticut enacted a similar law just a few years later and eventually other New England colonies did as well, with the exception of Rhode Island. It is unlikely, however, that most towns large enough to be covered by these measures complied immediately, especially if there was not a large number of families interested in establishing a school. Only eleven known schools existed in Massachusetts in 1650, serving some 2,339 households (or one for every 212); by 1689, the number of schools had grown to 23 and households to 8,088 (one for every 352). Even if the quantity of schools increased significantly in the eighteenth century, many children probably attended only briefly, if at all.

In other colonies, schools were even fewer. In 1689, Virginia had only eight schools for more than seven thousand households (or about one for every nine hundred); and New York had eleven for about 2200 families (one for every two hundred). Virginia's William and Mary (1693) was the only southern college of the colonial era. Others appeared in the middle colonies, reflecting the region's religious and cultural diversity. The College of New Jersey (today Princeton) was established in 1746, New York's Kings College (Columbia) in 1754, the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) in 1755, and New Jersey's Queens College (Rutgers) in 1766.

While the appearance of such institutions was notable, there also was considerable indifference or even hostility to formal education, especially in the South. In 1671, Lord Berkeley of Virginia made this famous statement: "I thank God that there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope that we shall not have these [for a] hundred years." Berkeley, who was governor at the time, echoed the view of many aristocrats and wealthy planters that "learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world." Attitudes such as these no doubt accounted for some of the regional disparities in colonial education.

Schools typically were run by a single teacher, or "master." Outside of Boston, New York or Philadelphia, schools rarely were larger than a single classroom, with perhaps several dozen students. For most colonists, schooling lasted less than seven or eight years, with only four or five months in each term. Students read the Bible, along with spellers, prayer books, catechisms, and other religious materials. The famous New England Primer, first published before 1690, was the best known of a wide range of reading materials used to impart lessons in spelling and grammar, along with morality and virtue. While there were a few legendary teachers, such as Ezekial Cheever of the Boston Latin School, many were college students or recent graduates waiting to be called to a pulpit. Yet other teachers were men of modest education, ill suited for other lines of work, managing schools for lack of better employment. In certain New England towns "dame schools" were run by women, offering classes for young children of both sexes. As a rule, teaching was a relatively low status occupation, even when schools were few and education was considered at least nominally important.

Statistics on literacy seem to confirm the general regional distribution of schools, although it is not clear that reading was always linked to formal education. New England exhibited the highest rates of literacy, as measured by counting signatures on wills. About three-quarters of the male population was literate in the mid-eighteenth century, and nearly 90 percent by the time of the revolution. Literacy rates appear to have been lower in the middle colonies, New York and Pennsylvania, and were the lowest in the South. The male literacy rate in Virginia was about 70 percent by the end of the eighteenth century, comparable to England. The female literacy rate was lower than men's everywhere, although in New England the gap appears to have narrowed by the end of the eighteenth century.

Much of life in colonial society revolved around the family, the central unit of productive activities and a key site of informal education. Families were large and children were expected to contribute to the welfare of each household. Relevant skills and bodies of knowledge, ranging from farming, carpentry, husbandry, and hunting to food preservation, soap making, cooking, and sewing were imparted informally, along with basic literacy. Popular books praised the independence of children, and the virtue of lessons learned away from parents and family. Many families sent older children to board with neighbors or relatives, as a form of apprenticeship and a means of discipline. There also were traditional apprenticeships for young men interested in learning a trade, a practice with deep European roots, observed widely in the colonies. In most cases, formal contracts were drawn up, periods of service were outlined, and lessons were agreed upon. The host household typically provided food, lodging, and other necessities of support in exchange for work, training, and education as specified by the contract. Occasionally there were complaints about cruel or unfair masters who did not abide by such agreements.

A limited number of schools were established to educate Native Americans and Blacks, the principal non-European groups in colonial society. Dartmouth College included a provision for American Indians in its original charter, although this idea was short lived. The Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, or SPG, aimed to convert non-Christian residents of the colonies, particularly Native Americans and Africans. Starting in the early eighteenth century, the SPG dispatched hundreds of ministers and teachers to the New World, opening a number of schools, most of them transitory. It was more effective at printing Bibles and religious tracts that circulated widely in colonial society.

The American Revolution was a watershed event in the early history of American education. The war disrupted many institutions, forcing students to suspend studies and teachers to consider joining one side or the other. More importantly, the revolution led to a new republican sensibility in the former colonies, articulated by a generation of enlightened leaders who believed that education was essential to the new political order. Citizens of a representative democracy, they reasoned, had to be well informed and prepared to critically assess the arguments and opinions of the day.

Education and schooling became topics of discussion and debate, the subject of speeches, addresses, articles, and pamphlets. Thomas Jefferson proposed publicly supported schools throughout Virginia, in a "Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge," before the revolution ended in 1779. He believed that free schooling would lead to a "natural aristocracy" of talent and accomplishment, leaders for the new nation. Jefferson's plan was never adopted, but it reflected the new significance attached to education. Benjamin Rush advocated making American children into "republican machines" through improved systems of schooling. Noah Webster advocated universal free education to foster national unity. Webster called for schools to establish "an inviolable attachment to their country" in the minds of children, and urged Americans to "begin with the infant in the cradle; let the first word he lisps be Washington." Early federal legislation for the distribution of public lands, passed in 1785 and 1787, called for a portion of the proceeds to be used for establishing state education systems, including universities. Seven of the new state constitutions also made reference to education, reflecting these concerns.

Among the most important effects of the American Revolution was its impact on the lives of colonial women. Benjamin Rush probably was the best-known proponent of women's education in the years immediately following the revolution. The reasoning was plain: if children needed to be trained in the virtues of republican government, the task of early education would fall to their mothers. Consequently, American women had to be educated, at least enough to read, write, and teach their children moral precepts and principles of republicanism. Historians have labeled this view "republican motherhood," and it contributed to increased interest in women's education during the latter decades of the eighteenth century.

While the colonial era saw limited development in education, the closing decades of the eighteenth century were marked by considerable ferment about it. Revolutionary ideas about state-sponsored systems of schooling, republican socialization, and women's education marked the dawn of a new era. It would take time, and the efforts of another generation of reformers, for these notions to affect the schooling of most Americans.

Education in the Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth century was a time of rapid economic growth and urbanization, an era of institution building, and education was shaped by these developments. Schools became instruments of reform, intended to help redress pressing social problems. State and city systems of schooling came into view, although local prerogatives continued to dictate most educational practices. It was a time when schools and education gradually assumed greater importance, and came to reflect prevailing social divisions and patterns of inequality in American life.

The nation's total investment in education grew dramatically, as more people attended school for greater lengths of time. In 1800, the average American received about 210 days of formal education in a lifetime. By 1850, that figure had more than doubled and by 1900, it had jumped to 1050 days, about half of what it would be in 2000. In the course of these changes, formal education began to assume the familiar dimensions of modern school experiences. Schooling became associated with the cultivation of proper "habits" of industriousness and responsibility, along with essential skills of literacy, numerical calculation, and knowledge of history, geography, and other subjects.

Education in the countryside evolved slowly, but schools developed more rapidly in the cities. Education was linked to questions of poverty and destitution, crime and social conflict. The earliest publicly supported urban institutions were called "charity schools," and were designated for the children of the poor. Started by civic-minded members of the urban middle and upper classes, they imparted proper norms of behavior along with basic lessons in literacy, mathematics, geography, and other subjects. Monitorial schools, modeled on the ideas of English educator Joseph Lancaster, featured a single teacher managing hundreds of children by using older students as "monitors." These and other schools reflected prevailing norms of strict discipline and order. Urban reformers struggled to improve attendance and introduce uniformity into lessons, at the same time that city growth created rising demand for schooling.

Industrialization posed challenges to education. With the advent of child labor, the factory became a school by default, although its lessons were usually quite harsh. While some states passed laws requiring factory owners to arrange for teaching child employees, such measures often were honored in the breach. Some reformers rejected the idea of industry altogether and attempted to establish ideal agrarian societies in isolated communities dotting the countryside. The best known of these communal experiments was Robert Owen's socialist cooperative in Indiana, called New Harmony. Established on principles of shared work and property, and an education system predicated on performing useful tasks without the imposition of discipline, New Harmony was a challenge to long-standing conventions. Although other communal experiments persisted considerably longer than Owen's, their collective influence on the educational system was limited.

Schools in the countryside were isolated and small; classes were conducted for relatively short periods and taught by itinerant masters with little formal training. A typical district school served an area of two to four square miles, populated by twenty to fifty families. These institutions helped to enhance basic literacy skills, but they built on a foundation established by local households. By the early nineteenth century, they literally dotted the countryside in most northern states, serving millions of children. Overall, levels of enrollment were quite high, over 70 percent for children aged nine to thirteen in 1830. Only Germany had higher rates, and by 1880, the U.S. led the world. These figures reflect girls attending along with boys, at least in the Northeastern states and the upper Midwest, another unique feature of American education.

Enrollments notwithstanding, the length of school terms varied, and day-to-day attendance often was inconsistent. There was scarcely any advanced training, as most teachers knew little beyond the "three Rs" and seldom remained in any one place longer than a year or two. Schools generally were ungraded, with children of all ages in the same room and enduring the discomforts of poor ventilation and threadbare accommodations. Discipline was emphasized, with rules enforced by harsh physical punishments. The chief instructional technique was recitation, requiring students to repeat portions of text they had memorized. Schools also conveyed basic mathematical and computational principles, along with a smattering of history, geography, and "moral philosophy." Contests and games, such as spelling bees or multiplication tournaments, helped break the monotony, and storytelling imparted history and geography lessons.

Early reformers were troubled by the variability that existed in the rural schools. They fretted over the haphazard training of teachers, the short terms squeezed between harvest and planting seasons, and the chance provision of such basic school supplies as books and firewood. Reformers also worried about the growing diversity of American society and the possibility of social conflict in the absence of common values and a shared identity. In light of these concerns, and the reforms they inspired, historians have referred to this period as the "age of the common school."

The best-known proponent of common school re-form was Horace Mann, an indefatigable lawyer and state legislator who accepted the newly created post of Secretary of the State Board of Education in Massachusetts in 1837. Like other reformers, Mann worked with a modest salary and little formal authority, traveling widely to proclaim the virtues of common schools. His annual reports, published by the state, became influential statements of educational reform. Mann battled over issues of religious sectarianism in instruction, property taxes for education, longer school terms, and systematic examinations and training requirements for teachers. In particular, he succeeded in persuading the Massachusetts legislature to establish the nation's first publicly supported teacher training institution, called a normal school, derived from the French word normale, in Lexington in 1838.

Mann and other reformers thought that women had a special role to play as teachers. Many believed women naturally suited for this role, due to their supposed maternal characteristics of patience and affection toward small children. Women teachers also cost less than men, even when professionally trained, so their employment could help restrain the expense of reforms. Feminization of teaching had occurred earlier in New England, but proceeded rapidly elsewhere, and by the time of the Civil War a majority of teachers in most northern states were women.

Henry Barnard was a famous contemporary of Mann who held similar appointments in Connecticut and Rhode Island and served as the first U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1867 to 1870. Other leading reformers included John Pierce in Michigan and Calvin Stowe in Ohio. This generation shared a similar set of values and assumptions about schooling and its purposes, much of it derived from their Protestant upbringing and nationalist ardor. Influential textbooks transmitted these values to generations of students, especially the popular McGuffey readers first published in 1836. These reforms found support in the fervent language regarding education in new state constitutions, particularly in the northern tier extending west from New England and the Middle Atlantic States.

Larger cities became sites of battles over the control and content of public schooling. Immigrant religious groups objected to the inveiglement of Protestant precepts and values in most curricula and textbooks, and they demanded support for parochial schools. The best-known conflict occurred in 1842, when New York's Bishop John Hughes challenged local charity school groups, prompting creation of a public board of education. Eventually, parochial schools became quite numerous in many northern cities, enrolling thousands of children and providing an important alternative to public schools.

Another aspect of reform concerned secondary or high schools, which became popular institutions in the nineteenth century. There had been little public demand for secondary schools until after the revolution, as private tutoring and tuition-based academies prepared young men for college and few occupations required advanced schooling. Beginning in 1821, with the establishment of the first public high school, Boston's English High School, American secondary schools, as distinct from a classical grammar school or academy, prepared students for a host of practical purposes. By the end of the nineteenth century, they existed in one form or another in nearly every type of city or large town in the country, enrolling nearly a half million students. The high school had become pervasive, even though it served less than 10 percent of the nation's teenage population.

High schools also featured instruction in some classical subjects, especially Latin, long considered a sign of achievement and status. Most larger public high schools admitted students by examination, and many prospective scholars were turned away. These tax-supported institutions often were quite costly, occupying palatial buildings erected at great expense and with considerable fanfare. This, along with their exclusivity, led to attacks, culminating in a landmark 1874 decision in Kalamazoo, Michigan, upholding the right of school boards to levy taxes to support such institutions. High schools in the United States also generally were coeducational. Advances in women's secondary education were envisioned by such pioneering educators as Emma Willard, Mary Lyon, and Catharine Beecher. While these reformers' influence was limited, and conservatives attacked the idea of coeducation, public support for women's education was high. By the end of the nineteenth century, female students outnumbered males in high schools across the country.

Education in the South lagged behind other regions. This was partly due to the plantation elite, which viewed popular education with suspicion. It also was linked to the legacy of slavery, and concerns with keeping the black population in a condition of servitude. Informal forms of education abounded, from tutoring to apprenticeship and other forms of vocational training. Despite their exclusion from formal education, slave families imparted lessons from one generation to another, transmitting a rich cultural tradition that left an indelible imprint on the region.

Free blacks established schools for their struggling communities, or modified those founded by philanthropic whites. This was true in northern cities before the Civil War, and throughout the South after. The Freedman's Bureau supported thousands of schools in the war's aftermath, providing critical skills and training. Black literacy rates began to improve significantly, and by 1890, nearly two-thirds could read. Even so, inequities abounded. Term lengths in southern black schools stagnated, while those in the white schools began to increase, even approaching the standard of the northern states by the 1890s. Black teachers were paid less than their white counterparts, and were allotted meager sums for textbooks and other supplies. Legal challenges to this were denied in the U.S. Supreme Court case Cumming v. School Board of Education of Richmond County, Georgia (1899). Where there had been some measure of parity during Reconstruction, southern school districts eventually spent as little on black students as a fifth of that expended for whites.

Native American education in the nineteenth century featured a deliberate crusade to alter an indigenous way of life. American Indians had long practiced their own forms of education, a process of acculturation that varied from one tribal group to another. Early schools for Native Americans were established by religious missionaries, intent on evangelizing and introducing basic literacy skills. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), established as part of the War Department in 1824, supervised dozens of schools by 1850, reaching a small fraction of the population. In 1870, programs were run by both the BIA and missionaries, as part of the federal government's "Peace Policy," although government schools eventually predominated. In 1877, there were 150 BIA schools enrolling several thousand students, and by 1900, the number of institutions had more than doubled and enrollments exceeded twenty thousand, representing half the school age population. Certain schools boarded students, the most famous being the Carlisle School, founded in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. These institutions attempted aggressive assimilation of American Indian students, but rarely succeeded. Despite these efforts, and an extensive network of BIA schools, Native Americans remained isolated on reservations, and outside the nation's social and economic mainstream.

The nineteenth century is also referred to as the "age of the college." While only a handful of higher education institutions existed in 1800, several hundred others were founded in the next fifty years. Leading state universities were established and other institutions were sponsored by religious denominations. Most fought for survival, competing for students and financial support. The Dartmouth College case, settled in 1819, granted private institutions autonomy from the state legislatures that chartered them. Many colleges offered few advanced courses, however, the rest being "prepatory" classes equivalent to those in academies or high schools. Through much of the nineteenth century, American collegiate institutions were dominated by a classical curriculum and an academic culture shaped by traditions handed down from the colonial period. Latin and Greek represented the core of the curriculum and most classes were conducted by recitation. There were efforts to introduce more scientific, historical, and literary studies. Francis Wayland advocated such innovations as president at Brown, but the Yale Report of 1828, a faculty document defending classical studies, helped to slow widespread change during the antebellum period. Tradition held the classical emphasis to be indispensable; without it, no course of study could represent collegiate standards.

Change was evident, however, in the latter decades of the century. The first Land Grant College Act in 1862, drafted by Vermont congressman Justin Smith Morrill, established support for institutions devoted to practical and scientific study. A second Morrill act in 1890 provided even more support for these state universities. Meanwhile, visionary leaders such as Harvard's Charles Eliot broke the stranglehold of tradition in the collegiate curriculum, introducing a liberal elective system that allowed students to choose courses freely. Scientific research institutes had been opened at Harvard, Yale, and other institutions even before Eliot's reforms, and new research oriented universities were established afterward, with Cornell (1868), Johns Hopkins (1876), and Chicago (1890) leading the way. These institutions were influenced by the German model of higher education, which emphasized research-based learning instead of classical training. Flagship state universities, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and California, also exhibited German influences and attracted professors dedicated to scholarship and research.

Adult education found expression in the lyceum movement, which began in 1826 and within a decade had established more than three thousand local forums for lectures and debates. After the Civil War, the Chautauqua movement sponsored traveling and local exhibitions and lectures, eventually embracing hundreds of local associations. These forms of popular learning continued into the early twentieth century, when their roles were increasingly filled by universities, museums, libraries, and other institutions.

By 1900, the basic elements of a modern education system were in place. Common school reform had established a network of primary schools, public high schools existed in towns and cities across the country, and colleges and universities were widely accessible. Americans attended school at higher rates than in any other nation and engaged in a variety of other educational activities. This keen interest in education would continue in the years ahead.

Reforming Education in the Early Twentieth Century

Education reform appeared in many guises in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Progressive education was identified with such renowned reform figures as John Dewey, Francis W. Parker, and William Wirt, and influenced a small but highly visible cadre of educational reformers. Other school reformers were less idealistic by temperament and more concerned with issues of efficiency and carefully aligning the purposes of schooling with the needs of the economy. High schools expanded rapidly, and colleges and universities also grew.

Progressive educators represented the legacy of such well-known European thinkers as Frederck Froebel, Henrich Pestalozzi, and Johann Herbart. They also were influenced the experiential psychology of William James and the work of Edward Sheldon, principal of the Oswego, New York Normal School. Dewey was the most famous of progressive educators, well known for his work with the University of Chicago Laboratory School, which he founded upon joining the university's faculty in 1894. A leading academic and popular philosopher, Dewey's best-known work on schooling was Democracy and Education (1916). Chicago had become a center for these ideas after Francis Parker arrived in 1883 to head the Cook County Normal School, one of the city's teacher-training institutions. William Wirt introduced "platoon schools" in nearby Gary, Indiana, in 1908.

Women were especially prominent in reform, founding progressive schools and occasionally providing leadership to school districts. Caroline Pratt, Marietta Johnson, and Flora Cook were leaders of innovative private institutions, and Chicago's Ella Flagg Young was among the nation's most important progressive superintendents. Their efforts met resistance, as many educators complained experiential methods did not impart academic skills. Other critics lampooned progressive education as a trendy fad among the social and intellectual elite.

Additional reformers in this period contributed to the emergence of new, centralized, and efficient city school systems between 1890 and 1920. This was a part of a sweeping reform campaign in municipal government, one that attacked the corruption associated with ward-based political regimes. Hundreds of municipalities changed from ward-level school boards and city councils to centralized and bureaucratic forms of governance and administration. Urban school systems came to be run by boards elected from across a community or municipality, and administered by superintendents selected for their experience and professional competence. This gave rise to new bureaucratic forms of school management and control. New organizational forms were adopted, the most important being the kindergarten and junior high schools.

A corollary to this was the development of standardized or mental testing, and school personnel trained in the new subfield of psychological measurement. French researchers Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon devised the first general test of mental aptitude in 1908; Lewis Terman of Stanford University and Edward Thorndike of Columbia University were among the chief American proponents of these techniques. By the latter 1920s, thousands of school districts employed standardized tests to judge student abilities, to justify curricular decisions, or simply to inform teachers and parents.

The rise of the mental testing movement was especially important for children with special needs or learning difficulties. Blind, deaf, or speech-impaired students had been educated in special schools since the mid-nineteenth century. As urban school systems grew, particular courses were established for such students. In 1879, for instance, Cleveland created a class for "feebleminded" children; Boston followed suit in 1898, as did other cities. Eventually, public fears were raised about these children intermingling with the "normal" population, sentiments fueled by pseudoscientific advocates of "mental hygiene" and "eugenics," a term for human perfectibility. Zealous proponents of these ideas issued racist bromides against immigration and the assimilation of minority groups, and even urged the sterilization of "feebleminded" couples.

This also was a time of rapid expansion for the American high school. Enrollments stood at about 300,000 in 1890 (public and private schools combined), and by 1930, the number had increased to nearly 5 million, almost half of the nation's eligible teenage population. Much of this was due to the growing number of institutions: on average, a new secondary school was established every day. The regions leading this expansion were the northern, midwestern, and western states, especially areas with high levels of income and little inequality. Enrollments tended to be higher in communities with fewer manufacturing jobs and smaller numbers of immigrants. On average, high school graduates earned higher wages, an indication of their contributions to the economy.

The general bearing and purpose of secondary education was framed by the "Report of the Committee of Ten," published in 1893. Comprised of university representatives and national education leaders, this group was chaired by Harvard's Charles Eliot, and included William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education. Its purpose was to establish order and uniformity in a secondary education system that included public high schools, academies, private and religious schools, and various other institutions. Twenty-five years later, a second national report was issued by the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education of the National Education Association, chaired by Clarence Kingsley. Widely known as the "Cardinal Principles Report," this document outlined a broad range of social and academic purposes for the high school. It provided a vision of the "comprehensive high school," embracing vocational and academic curricula and uniting students in a common commitment to democratic citizenship. This would serve as an important American ideal for decades to come.

Specialized secondary curricula were developed for women and blacks. Ellen Richards, a chemist and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's first female faculty member, helped to launch a distinctive academic field called "home economics." In high schools home economics became a way of defining women's roles through training in "domestic science" and socialization in prescribed standards of conduct. At the same time, commercial education, training in stenography, typing and bookkeeping, became popular among women interested in office employment.

Due to limited opportunities, fewer than 5 percent of eligible black students were enrolled at the secondary level at this time, most of them in private schools supported by tuition, local donations, and northern philanthropy. Public high schools were established throughout the south for whites. Between 1905 and 1920 more than five hundred were established, making secondary schooling accessible across the region. By contrast, in 1916 only fifty-eight public high schools for African Americans existed in fourteen southern states, just twenty-five in the former Confederate states. Many of these schools featured a curriculum focused on manual trades and domestic science, reflecting the influence of Booker T. Washington, the period's most famous black educator. W. E. B. Du Bois was an outspoken critic of Washington, advocating high academic standards for a "talented tenth" of black students.

Nationally, post-secondary education continued to expand. Overall enrollment climbed from about a quarter million in 1900 to more than a million in 1930, representing more than 10 percent of the age group. The number of female students grew even faster, from less than 40 percent of the student body in the 1890s to almost half by the twenties. These developments infused new verve into campus life. Fraternities, sororities, and dating became popular, especially after 1920, along with spectator sports such as football.

There was a decided shift in the university curriculum, and a new utilitarian disposition was signaled by the appearance of professional schools and institutes. Nineteenth-century legal and medical training had been conducted by private schools or individuals; after 1900 universities began acquiring these institutions, or developing their own, and awarding degrees to their graduates. Similar arrangements were made for the preparation of engineers, social workers, and other professionals. The first university programs to provide training for business also appeared, offering courses in accounting, finance, management, marketing, and similar subjects.

The growth of higher education also led to new types of institutions. Among the most important was the junior college, a two-year school intended to offer preparation for higher study, later called community colleges. These schools first appeared in the West and the Midwest, numbering some two hundred by the 1920s, but enrolling less than a tenth of all undergraduates. Other more popular forms of higher education also flourished, among them municipal colleges in the larger cities and private urban universities, many of them religious. State-sponsored normal schools gradually expanded their purview, and began to evolve into state colleges and universities. These institutions served local students, providing baccalaureate education along with a variety of professional programs. Altogether, the range of higher education alternatives expanded appreciably, accounting for much of the increase in enrollments.

By the close of this period, much of the creative energy of progressive education had dissipated. Due to the Great Depression, the 1930s were years of fiscal distress for many school districts, particularly those in larger cities. Programs were cut, especially extracurricular activities and such "frills" as music and art. At the same time, high school and college enrollments increased as youth employment opportunities disappeared. World War II, on the other hand, pulled students away from the schools to serve in the military or work in war industries. Neither episode provided an environment for educational reform. Many of the developments of earlier decades remained in place, such as standardized testing, the comprehensive high school and the new research-based and utilitarian university. Yet, the impact of other reform ideals, particularly those of Dewey and his progressive allies, was less enduring.

Education in Postwar America

Among the most striking features of the latter twentieth century was the growing importance attached to formal education, both as a matter of public policy and as a private concern. The federal government became a source of funding, and education developed into a major issue in national politics. At the same time, more Americans attended school, as enrollments climbed at all levels of the educational system, but especially in the nation's high schools and colleges.

In the 1950s schools expanded rapidly, straining resources with the postwar "baby boom." A number of prominent academics and journalists criticized progressive education, linking it in the public mind with failure in the schools. This was partly due to the climate of the Cold War and suspicions that progressive educators were "soft headed" or left-leaning. It also reflected perceptions of a lack of discipline in American children, particularly teenagers. When the Russian Sputnik spacecraft was launched in 1957, many attributed American failures in the "space race" to shortcomings in the schools. This led to passage of the National Defense Education Act in 1958, boosting federal support for instruction in science and mathematics.

The major events in postwar education, however, revolved around questions of race and inequality. The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated schools to be inherently unequal, was a milestone of national educational policy and in popular thinking about social justice. The decision was the culmination of a series of legal challenges to segregated education undertaken by the NAACP in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It immediately led to vows of non-compliance by southern politicians and educators. Consequently, desegregation proceeded slowly but gained speed in the following decade, when compliance was linked to federal school funding. Civil rights activists waged local battles against segregation and educational inequality, first in the South and later in the North, where de facto segregation was widespread. De jure policies of separate schooling ended, but overall patterns of segregation proved much harder to change.

The changing racial and ethnic composition of the nation's principal metropolitan areas exacerbated these issues. With the migration of millions of blacks after World War II, big city public schools systems became divided along racial lines. Despite the principles of integration and equity embodied in the "Brown" decision and the efforts of liberal-minded educators, growing inequalities in education came to characterize metropolitan life. Because of residential segregation, school resources were also spatially distributed, a point that eventually became contentious. Schools in black neighborhoods tended to be overcrowded, with larger classes and fewer experienced teachers than schools in white areas. Migration to the suburbs, widely known as "white flight," also made it difficult to desegregate city schools. Between 1960 and 1980, the country's suburban population nearly doubled in size, making urban desegregation an elusive goal.

Civil rights organizations issued legal challenges to de facto patterns of school segregation, charging school districts with upholding segregation to avoid aggravating whites. A series of federal court decisions in the latter 1960s and early 1970s articulated a new legal doctrine requiring the active pursuit of integrated schools. In the landmark case of Swan v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971), a federal district court established mandatory bussing of students as a remedy to residential segregation. In sub-sequent years, desegregation plans requiring bussing were implemented in scores of cities, most of them by order of federal or state authorities. These decisions were supported by research, particularly a national survey under-taken in 1966 by sociologist James Coleman, finding that integrated schooling produced high achievement levels in minority students. The Supreme Court's 1974 Miliken v. Bradley decision, however, limited the impact of desegregation plans by prohibiting bussing across district lines, effectively exempting most suburban communities.

Meanwhile, education became an integral part of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty." In 1965, he sponsored the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), dramatically expanding federal assistance to schools. Title 1 of this legislation provided resources to schools with high numbers of poor students, to address inequities. Other educational initiatives begun under the Johnson administration included Head Start, a preschool program aimed at children from poor families. By 1972, more than a million children were enrolled in the program and studies showed that it boosted academic achievement.

Legislation addressing inequality and discrimination extended to other groups of students. The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 provided funding to schools serving the nation's 3 million students who did not speak English as a primary language. In 1970 the Office of Civil Rights issued guidelines requiring districts where such students constituted more than 5 percent of the population to take "affirmative steps" to meet their needs. At about the same time a series of court cases challenged the principle of separate classes for special education students, a group that had grown rapidly in the postwar period. In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was signed into law by President Gerald Ford. With this measure, the federal government required school districts to provide these students with free and equitable schooling in the least restrictive environment possible. Similarly, the National Organization of Women (NOW) included a provision in its 1967 Women's Bill of Rights calling for "equal and unsegregated education." Five years later, Title IX was included in ESEA, declaring "no person … shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." School districts responded most visibly in the area of women's athletics. The 1970s witnessed a five-fold increase in female participation in competitive sports, although change in other areas was much slower.

The post-World War II period also witnessed significant change in higher education. An influential Harvard faculty report in 1945 advocated flexible curricula under the heading "general education," and a presidential commission on higher education in 1949 presciently argued the need for greater capacity. By 1970, enrollments had quadrupled to more than 8 million. Early growth was due to the GI Bill, which provided tuition benefits to veterans, but the major source of new students was the affluent postwar "baby-boom" generation, a third of whom eventually enrolled in college. The number of institutions did not increase significantly, but the size of campuses grew dramatically. Colleges dropped any pretense of governing the daily living habits of students, even those residing on campus, creating a fertile field for alternative lifestyles and cultural practices. It also opened the door to widespread sexual freedom. The Supreme Court decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District (1969), limiting the ability of schools to control student self-expression, extended many of the same freedoms to secondary students.

Perhaps more important, the large concentrations of young people with little supervision abetted the development of political organizations, and students became conspicuous participants in both the civil rights and antiwar movements. The latter was based largely on campuses, and came to a head in the spring of 1970, when four students were killed by national guardsmen at Kent State University. Yet other protests focused on curricular issues, leading to a number of new courses, departments, and programs. The most important of these were African American (or Black) Studies and Women's Studies programs, but there were others as well.

All of these developments helped to make education a contentious national political issue. Bussing plans produced heated reactions from white urbanites. Others believed the schools had drifted away from their academic mission, and that the universities cultivated protestors. The Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, barring quotas but allowing race to be considered in university admissions, further polarized public opinion. In 1980, promising to end federal involvement in education, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan vowed to remove the U.S. Department of Education as a cabinet position. It was a promise that remained unfulfilled, however. A national commission's 1983 report on the schools, "A Nation at Risk," further galvanized support for federal leadership in strengthening the education system. These concerns led George H. Bush to campaign as the "education president," even though he proposed little change in policy.

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, American interest in formal education reached historic highs. With public expenditures on education (in constant dollars) more than doubling since 1960, by 1990 there was growing interest in student performance on tests of scholastic achievement. As the economy shifted away from manufacturing, rates of college enrollment among secondary graduates increased from less than 50 percent in 1980 to nearly two-thirds in 2000. Spurred by the women's movement and growing employment options, the number of female students increased even more rapidly, after lagging in earlier decades. At the same time, vocational education programs considered integral to the comprehensive high school were increasingly seen as irrelevant.

Growing disquiet about the quality of public education contributed to movements to create "charter schools," publicly supported institutions operating outside traditional school systems, and "voucher" programs offering enrollment in private institutions at public expense. These and other "choice" or "market-based" alternatives to the public schools were supported by Republicans, keen to challenge existing systems and to undermine Democratic teacher's unions. By 2000, there were more than two thousand charter schools in communities across the country, with states such as Arizona and Michigan leading the movement. Voucher experiments in Milwaukee, Cleveland, and a few other cities have not produced decisive results.

In the 2000 presidential election, candidates Albert Gore and George W. Bush both placed education policy initiatives in the forefront of their campaigns. This was a historic first and an indication of the heightened significance of education in the public mind. Bush's narrow victory in the election was at least partly due to his calls for greater accountability in schooling at all levels. Passage of federal legislation re-authorizing ESEA, popularly known as "Leave No Child Behind Act," established testing programs as a requirement for receiving federal assistance. Even though this was a natural extension of the "systemic reform" initiatives undertaken by the Clinton Administration, encouraging state testing regimes, it marked a new level of federal involvement in the nation's school system.

Conclusion

American education has changed a great deal since 1647, when Massachusetts passed its first school law. The reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries helped to establish a comprehensive education system extending from the primary school to the university. The ferment of the postwar period revolved around issues of equity and excellence, as ever more Americans attended some form of school. Much has been accomplished, however. Many of the most abhorrent inequities have been narrowed considerably. As a result of past struggles there is considerable parity in black and white education, despite persistent segregation and achievement gaps. Gender differences have diminished even more dramatically. This is not to say that problems do not exist. The United States is host to a new generation of immigrants, and battles have been waged over bilingual education and other cultural issues; but the outlook is bright, as Americans still exhibit a firm commitment to education as a means of providing opportunity. That, more than anything else, is the principal legacy of American education, and its great hope for the future.

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