Beyond Structuralism and Voluntarism: The Politics and Discourse of Progressive School
Reform, 1890-1930
Author(s): Mustafa Emirbayer
Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 21, No. 5 (Oct., 1992), pp. 621-664
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657804
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Beyond structuralism and voluntarism: The politics and
discourse of Progressive school reform, 1890-1930
MUSTAFA EMIRBAYER
New School for Social Research
"When the school introduces and trains each child of society into membership within ... community [life], saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction,
we shall have the deepest and best guarantee of a larger society which is
worthy, lovely, and harmonious."' So wrote John Dewey in The School
and Society, one of the earliest and most fundamental texts of what was
to become the Progressive movement in education. Inspired by
Dewey's vision, a wide range of educators, parents, and community
leaders came together during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in an impassioned crusade to transform American public
schooling. They set out to reduce drastically the size of local school
boards and to dismantle structures of "patronage democracy" that then
pervaded educational administration. They also implemented, among a
host of curricular and pedagogical initiatives, new courses of study in
"character education" and "civics."These programs, overlooked today
by virtually all educational historians of the period, sought to create a
new type of "democratic character,"one equipped for responsible citizenship in the new "national community" that was emerging.
These far-reaching developments in American public education, and in
moral and civic instruction in particular, raise a number of intriguing
historical questions. Why, for example, did a crusade to transform
public schooling emerge and gain support in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries? Who were the educational Progressives
themselves, and what were their cultural and institutional goals? Just
what did their struggles actually accomplish, and how were they able to
realize so many of their aims? It is these historical questions that I set
out to answer in the following case-study.
Theory and Society 21: 621-664, 1992.
? 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
622
In addressing these substantive issues, however, I also inquire into some
broader themes. For the case of educational Progressivism, and particularly its agenda for moral and civic renewal, raises the question of
how cultural and institutional change in general are to be explained. In
what follows, I contend that one-sidedly structuralist perspectives on
this issue - the most sophisticated among them being the "polity-centered" approach - and their voluntarist rivals, considered separately,
are both inadequate. An encompassing analytical strategy is required
that transcends the false dichotomy between these two perspectives.
After a brief assessment of the most prominent theories in the educational literature, I outline the key features of just such an analytical
approach. In the second half of the article I test the explanatory power
of this strategy by presenting an historical case-study of moral and educational reform in the Progressive era. While I do not claim to set forth
a detailed empirical analysis here, I do aspire to provide the substantive
outline for just such an analysis, demonstrating how a more powerful
"multidimensional" argument might be elaborated. My main contention is that while socioeconomic and political transformations did
frame the conditions for school reform during this period, its timing
and eventual consequences were more decisively influenced by the
emergence of a new discourse of "sacred" American ideals within the
public sphere. The causes and outcomes of educational Progressivism
- in both its "administrative"and "pedagogical" moments - can only be
explained in terms of struggles over the legitimate definition of these
sacred ideals.
Explaining Progressive school reform
Educational Progressivismas an object of investigation
How then are the causes and outcomes of educational Progressivism to
be understood? In particular, what sort of conceptual approach can
best make sense of the Progressives' reform efforts at the classroom
level? In this section I provide an assessment and critique of some
alternative strategies for the analysis of Progressive education. Before
turning to this discussion, however, I pause briefly to lay out the key
features of educational Progressivism itself as an object of inquiry, and
to justify my own highly partial and selective analytical focus in this
essay.
The crusade for Progressive school reform is a notoriously difficult
phenomenon to define, comprising as it does a wide range of develop-
623
ments at both the local and national levels. Falling within its bounds,
for example, are curricular and pedagogical reforms such as the kindergarten movement, manual and vocational education, "home education," and evening classes for adults, in addition to the moral and civic
education programs mentioned above. Belonging to this category as
well are efforts in local communities to reform the political and administrative structure of public school systems - to replace the decentralized, patronage-based school boards of earlier periods with smaller,
more bureaucratized decision-making bodies. And finally, at the
national level, Progressive education signifies professionalizing efforts
by schoolteachers as well as by administrators, and the creation and
expansion of massive networks of communication through such organizations as the Progressive Education Association and the Federal
Bureau of Education. Historically, each of these diverse streams of
educational Progressivism manifests its own distinctive rhythm and
trajectory. But we can nonetheless group them all together under a
common banner because, as we shall see, they all shared a common,
unifying discourse, a similar set of concerns expressed in the ideals and
images of civic republicanism, Protestant millennialism and liberal
individualism. These distinctive concerns gained voice as well during
the political phase of American Progressivism, but ultimately they long
outlasted this movement in their educational manifestation.
In this article I direct attention to the "administrative" aspects of the
Progressive education movement, as well as to the moral and civic aspirations of its curricular or "pedagogical" wing. I do not discuss, it
should be pointed out, the nation-wide professionalizing dimension of
Progressivism, except as a means to shedding further light on these two
alternative developments. My goal in this article certainly is not to
explain educational Progressivism as a whole, nor even to isolate its
most "significant" or "salient" features. Rather, it is to investigate
aspects of the Progressive education movement that clearly embody its
reformist aspirations at two distinct levels: the societal and political, as
in the case of "administrative Progressivism," and that of individual
character, as in its efforts in moral and civic education. These two
dimensions, which I later show to have been closely interrelated, capture between them the larger goal of the Progressive movement - a goal
partially realized - to create a new moral basis for American society.
They thereby present us with a striking test-case of cultural and institutional change, an illuminating reference point for the critical survey of
alternative theoretical strategies that is to follow.
624
Structuralistapproaches to the study of educational change
Although the political and administrative efforts of the Progressive
school reformers have been well-studied, to this day there still exists no
book-length analysis of moral and civic education in this period. With
few exceptions, educational research has neglected the microscopic
domain of curriculum and pedagogy.2 In this section I therefore turn to
recent scholarly debates on educational change in general for some
plausible lines of reasoning in respect to this issue. These approaches among which must be included various "class-based," "polity-centered," and "culturalist"strategies - do shed partial light on the causes
and outcomes of educational Progressivism. In so doing they illustrate
many of the basic strengths and weaknesses of broader strategies for
the analysis of cultural and institutional change.
The most influential theories to have been advanced in the last several
decades specify structural factors as the most significant determinants
of educational change. They emphasize the role of class conflict and of
the state in shaping the nature and purposes of public schooling. One
such perspective portrays public education as serving the function of
reinforcing class domination. In one of its variants, schooling is said to
provide "a method of disciplining children in the interest of producing
a properly subordinate adult population"; its underlying purpose is
deemed to be the reproduction of the social division of labor.3 In
another variant, the focus of attention is on "social" rather than on
"industrial"discipline.4 The claim is advanced that "the underlying concern of educational crusaders [is] less with pressing the pace of
modernization that with containing its negative effects."5 The profound
dislocations caused by industrial and urban development lead wary
elites to implement mass schooling as an instrument for the maintenance of social control. Finally, alongside both these "class imposition" approaches is a "class-struggle" account that directs attention to
the inherently contested nature of educational institutions. Workers, it
maintains, strive for expanded public school enrollments and for a
common, nonstratified curriculum, while capitalists favor limited
enrollments and separate tracks for the laboring masses and the elite.
In particular, capitalists seek coercive programs in moral and civic
instruction for working-class children. The public schools can be conceived as "the resultant of [these] two vectors of capitalist and workingclass power."6
These various class-based accounts do illuminate certain aspects of the
625
transformation of public schooling. The inner logic of capitalism, for
example, has played a crucial role in structuring the social relations of
American education. The drive during the Progressive era, in fact, for
centralized school administration cannot be understood apart from it.
Yet these theories do also fail in other ways to generate satisfactory
explanations. Both "industrial"and "social discipline" arguments posit,
for instance, a far-sighted capitalist elite somehow capable of perceiving that its long-term interests consisted in expanding rather than limiting the education of all workers. Moreover, they imply that labor was
powerless to contest the imposition of school reform by this dominant
social group; the working class was simply absent as a significant historical actor. Educational scholarship has sharply questioned both
assumptions.7 Still more disturbing, however, is the inability of all classbased approaches, including the class struggle perspective, to explain
the actual timing of educational reform. Enrollment rates in most
regions of the U.S. were quite high long before industrialization, while,
on the other hand, one of the most far-reaching periods of educational
change - that of Progressive school reform itself - took place several
decades after industrial expansion had already begun. Progressives,
moreover, enjoyed support in their reform efforts among a diversity of
social groups throughout rural America as well as in factory towns and
cities.8
Class-based perspectives also fail to recognize the significance of cultural ideals in defining the very interests and identities of the educational
reformers. Often these social actors, only some of whom had direct
experience in commerce and industry, talked and acted in ways seemingly out of all proportion to the interests of private property in industrial or social discipline. At the level of the classroom itself, moreover,
they fought to implement new modes of moral and civic education concerned not only with fashioning good workers or containing the ill
effects of industrialism, but also with shaping the future of a democratic
"national community." Defining citizenship broadly - as "so living and
working together that the best interests of the whole group are always
furthered" - they proposed the reorganization of classroom instruction
so that it would promote each student's capacities for social interaction
and creative problem-solving.9 To be sure, the efforts of the Progressive
reformers often failed conspicuously to meet these lofty goals; many of
their curricular and pedagogical innovations never found their way into
actual classrooms. Yet their strivings to implement such programs in
the first place - and to do so in school systems across the country contradict the view that these reformers were acting primarily in the
626
interests of a dominant social elite. No such elite would have favored
courses of study so inclusive, cosmopolitan, and participatory in spirit.
"The basic riddle is not what drove groups apart [in this period], but
what made them seek common cause.""0There was a certain indeterminacy to Progressive school reform which eludes class-based historiography.
The most powerful and sophisticated of those explanatory strategies
that emphasize the causal role of structural factors is the "polity-centered" perspective." This approach shares with industrial and social
discipline theories an interest in the dynamics of class imposition; it
agrees with the proposition that "local political actors, faced with problems of social order created by industrial change, tried to create
schools as a way to protect the social structure."'2 It also affirms that
workers did concern themselves, whether as "labor" or as "ethnic
groups," in school reform. This polity-centered approach, however,
looks beyond the "logic of industrialism" as well, to the role played by
commercial farmers in the countryside and by the "new middle class"
of professionals and corporate managers in urban areas. Moreover, it
complements this broadened "society-centered" focus by examining
the independent impact upon public schooling of politically active
groups and individuals. "State-building educators," it contends, "were
even more significant in pressing for school expansion than were workers or business-people." 3 Also causally important were such structural
variables as the nature of mass party systems, the timing and extent of
political incorporation, and the organizational structure of state and
local governments. Educational change, from this perspective, was not
simply a by-product of industrial or capitalist development, but rather
the outcome of complex interactions among a diversity of groups
within specific political contexts.
In a variety of ways, then, the polity-centered strategy of analysis
recommends itself over alternative explanatory approaches that highlight structural factors. Its sharp focus on working people as significant
actors, together with its appreciation of the causal role of other social
groups, of state officials, and of the very organization of the political
domain itself, render it a more sophisticated tool for the study of educational change. On the other hand, the polity-centered approach is
severely weakened by its understanding of cultural discourses. Like the
various versions of class analysis, it conceptualizes such discourses in
an instrumentalist fashion, failing to appreciate, for example, the
impact of civic republicanism - as well as of the biblical and Enlighten-
627
ment traditions - in shaping the very intentions and institutional goals
of the school reformers. It fails to analyze the contribution of these discourses to building the larger coalition of businessmen, farmers, professionals, and some workers which, in fact, supported educational
Progressivism. Moreover, it remains blind to the fact that this process
of coalition-building unfolded in the Progressive era through struggles
over the meaning of "sacred" American beliefs and values. Their own
cultural and educational ideals led the Progressive school reformers to
implement new programs in moral and civic instruction far in excess of
the requirements of state-building. A sounder analysis would necessitate a substantially different sort of theoretical strategy, one emphasizing both structural forces and the potential significance of cultural
ideals.
Culturalistapproaches to the study of educational change
Impressive attempts have been made in recent educational scholarship
to elaborate precisely such a framework. Among the most important of
these is the "organizational" perspective, which specifies "bureaucratic
values" such as efficiency, expertise, and scientific rationality as having
been crucial elements in the Progressive drive for moral and institutional reform. One variant of this view, inspired by the writings of
Michel Foucault, regards not only public schooling, but also such institutions as the prison, the asylum, and the family as progressively imposing the rigid, faceless power of bureaucratic "reason" upon American society throughout the Progressive era.14 Another variant, deriving
from the work of Robert Wiebe, more specifically portrays the Progressives themselves as a "new middle class" of ambitious professionals and
scientific experts powerfully inspired by the ideal of a society in which
rational administration has replaced politics and eliminated "corruption" and "disorder." In Wiebe's words, "The heart of progressivism
was the ambition of the new middle class to fulfill its destiny through
bureaucratic means."15 Such theoretical perspectives do resemble
class-based arguments in their assumption of a single pivotal actor
behind Progressive reforms, but they depart decisively from such
accounts in their emphasis not on the continued social influence of an
older capitalist elite, but rather on the growing power of an aggressive
new stratum whose significance arose not from its position in the structure of production, but instead from its possession of organizational
expertise. Moreover, the organizational approach in general sees this
new elite as not merely an actor trying to maintain its social position,
628
but, in fact, as an ideologically motivated group aspiring to create a new
type of social and moral order.
The strengths of this organizational approach in explaining educational
Progressivism are considerable. For one thing, it grasps the crucial fact,
as one historian has put it, that "The rise of complex bureaucracies was
the most important characteristic of modern America." 6 In addition, it
persuasively links this key structural development to a veritable seachange in elite attitudes toward the social organization of public
schooling. But on the other hand, this view also reveals, upon closer
inspection, a number of shortcomings that ultimately mark it as but a
transitional step toward a multidimensional explanation. For paradoxically, the organizational perspective neglects to analyze the distinctive
politics and discourse of educational Progressivism. The drive for Progressive school reform seems "so closely identified with the general
process of bureaucratization that one wonders what distinguished it
from other elements in the society."'7 More specifically, this account
fails to see that the Progressive movement itself was a broad-based
coalition drawn together by its cultural agenda - that, indeed, the "new
class" which served as its social carrier was hardly a "pregiven"historical actor, but rather was originally constituted in part through cultural
discourses. Moreover, the Progressive school reformers' keen interest
in moral and civic education - that very aspect of their agenda which
organizational theorists tend most frequently to overlook - indicates
just how crucial discourse was to their understanding of their own collective identity and historical mission.
In recent years, a more genuinely "culturalist"perspective has emerged
that lays greater stress on the beliefs and values underlying Progressive
school reform.'8 This new strategy of analysis draws upon earlier studies that conceptualize the Progressive reform impulse in general as an
expression of "status anxiety" on the part of the middle classes.19 Educational Progressivism, by this earlier account, represents a symbolic
attempt by these groups to defend their threatened status position in
the face of alarming changes in the distribution of social deference. The
difficulty with this "status anxiety" argument is that it is unverifiably
"social-psychological"; its assumption that irrational - indeed, paranoid - motives drove the Progressive reformers has proved untenable.
In another, somewhat more optimistic variant, proponents of the culturalist perspective depict the transformation of public schooling in the
early twentieth century as the progressive realization of democratic
629
ideals.2" Progressive school reformers, by this account, sought to institutionalize a broadly egalitarian program, a powerful vision of a
"democratic" American future and of the moral and civic virtues needed to realize it. These new culturalist arguments forcefully affirm the
explanatory significance of discursive formations; they show how Progressive reform leaders were able to draw upon a diversity of languages
in articulating their political agendas and in elaborating an ideology
useful for educational coalition-building.
Such an analytical emphasis upon discourse has proven useful in explaining the peculiar timing of educational Progressivism. For while
structural developments had already generated a context ripe for the
emergence of such a movement, its actual appearance required, in addition, the fashioning of a new educational discourse. No such moment of
"collective effervescence" in educational theorizing, in fact - educational
"renaissance" - had occurred since the early nineteenth century, and
none would occur again until at least the mid-1960s.21 The discoursecentered perspective also helps to make sense of the fact that the historical trajectory of Progressive education - the "educational phase of
American Progressivism writ large" - would continue well into the
1930s, long outlasting other reform movements of the Progressive era.2
The Progressive school reformers were able to formulate an agenda in
terms of which all subsequent educational innovations would be defined.
Finally, this approach, with its deliberate emphasis upon the independent causal role of discursive systems, makes clear how the educational
Progressives could have striven for school reforms so underdetermined
by structural changes. For all these reasons it is able to make good the
fundamental deficiencies of its various structuralistcounterparts.
Despite its strengths, however, this strategy of analysis also tends to err
in the direction of a one-sided voluntarism. It is certainly "on target"
about the role of cultural idioms in helping to shape the agendas of
educational reform. But in its focus upon discursive categories, it manifests the fatal weakness of all idealist perspectives: namely, an insufficient conceptualization of the objective constraints on voluntaristic
action. The influence culture actually exerts can vary considerably
under different structural contexts. It matters a great deal, for example,
that the movement for Progressive school reform pursued its agenda
under specific historical conditions marked by the absence of a centralized bureaucracy and of sharp class polarization. Moreover, as Theda
Skocpol points out, the very "choices and uses of available idioms and the particular potentials within them that are elaborated - will be
630
influenced by the social and political situations of the acting groups."23
In the Progressive era, for instance, respectable citizens from the emergent middle stratum of American society reacted to the changing cultural environment in their cities with ambivalence and with a growing
concern for the moral and spiritual health of the Republic. Classical
republican images of "corruption"and "renewal"provided these actors
with a vocabulary through which to articulate their hopes and aspirations in the language of moral reform. Structural and ideational forces
acted together in this way to shape even the discourse of educational
Progressivism.
The outlines of a new analytical strategy
What is requried, then, for the elaboration of a satisfactory explanation
of the causes and outcomes of the Progressive school reform movement is a more encompassing theoretical strategy. In particular, a multidimensional approach is needed which subsumes key analytical principles from both the structuralist and culturalist perspectives on educational change.24 While it is true that nearly all major studies of educational Progressivism do devote considerable empirical attention to a
wide range of causal factors, they nonetheless do so in an essentially
reductionistic fashion. An adequate theoretical scheme must redress
this balance at the most fundamental analytical level. What would such
an analytical approach actually look like, and what kinds of historical
evidence would it draw upon in explaining the transformation of public
schooling in the Progressive era?
To begin with, any satisfactory account of educational Progressivism
would have to specify the broad socioeconomic and political conditions in which it emerged and pursued its institutional and cultural
goals. Progressive school reform did not occur in a social vacuum; on
the contrary, both its educational ideals and its capacity to implement
these ideals were decisively influenced by its specific historical context.
Knowing more about that context - and about how the discourse of
educational Progressivism "articulated"with it - would help to illuminate the sources of its powerful appeal to a wide diversity of social
groups.25 Analyzing the setting of this movement would also help to
shed light on the structural obstacles facing it - or, conversely, on those
features of its social and political environment facilitating its advance.
This is precisely, in fact, what a polity-centered approach to educational change sets out to accomplish.26
631
In any satisfactory explanation, however, the causal role of human
agency would also have to be emphasized. In seeking to implement
their cultural and institutional programs, state-building elites (and
other actors) often came up against stiff resistance from dominant
groups; any adequate account of their struggles would have to examine
the strategies each utilized in pursuit of its goals. For such an analysis, a
discourse-centered perspective is indispensable; it focuses attention on
one key aspect of any political strategy: coalition-building. Discourse is
so important because groups do not come endowed with objectively
pre-given interests and identities. This holds true even for state-builders such as those who were involved in the movement for Progressive
school reform. The objective positions of historical actors within the
socioeconomic or political domains do not predispose them in favor of
(or against) any specific agenda for institutional or cultural change.
Actors may simulataneously belong to many regional, ethnic, religious,
class, or ideological groupings. Hence collective identities and interests
must be politically - indeed, discursively - constructed.27 This task of
organizing otherwise disparate social groups around unifying symbolic
categories is a crucial challenge for human agency - and a necessary
object of sociological analysis.
A comprehensive analytical strategy would also have to direct attention
to the efforts of opposing groups to reconstruct the very terms - the
shared categories - of cultural and political discourse itself.28Even the
most secular and differentiated societies are bound together by transcedent, overarching systems of ideals, beliefs, and symbols that may be
said to manifest the quality of "sacredness." In the American context,
Robert Bellah has conceptualized this overarching system of meanings
as a "civil religion."29Oppositional and dominant groups do battle over
the legitimate definition of this "sacred center" of society. They compete for exclusive control over the fundamental categories of their
society's civil religion, seeking to set the terms in which public debates
are conducted and issues and alternative solutions formulated. Once
redefined, these ideals and visions frequently exercise a powerful
influence over subsequent action sequences.3" Progressive educators,
for example, drew upon the potent imagery of "republican virtue" and
"corruption" to elaborate a winning argument about the necessity of
school reform for the moral regeneration of the citizenry. They succeeded in identifying their own cause with the highest, most "sacred"
aspirations of American democracy. But having thereby framed the
"discursive field" upon which educational debate unfolded, they saw
their own reform agenda "outlive" its immediate historical environ-
632
ment, and exert an autonomous influence over later educational developments well into the middle of the twentieth century.
The social theorist whose work most deeply informs this approach to
discursive factors, of course, is Durkheim.31 What Durkheim contributes, specifically, is the insight that collective action has a crucial symbolic dimension; his theory emphasizes the power of cultural ideals and
images in defining and interpreting otherwise inchoate tensions generated by long-term processes of structural change. These symbols derive
much of their force from the pressures of material dislocation, the disruption of established social relationships and of important social institutions. Yet such structural tendencies do not by themselves generate
social movements. Contrary to a recent mode of theorizing that
claimed the authority of Durkheim himself in explaining collective
behavior in terms of psychopathology and social disintegration, the
guiding principle here is that social solidarity is a "universal concomitant of group action," and that such solidarity is constituted through
cultural/political language and discourse.32 Institutional and cultural
analysis also has much to gain from the Durkheimian idea that "there is
something eternal to religion," for this principle underscores the continuing importance of "the sacred" in modern society.33 From such a
point of departure, one can discern what is at least partially at stake in
conflicts between oppositional and dominant groups: namely, the ultimate meaning of a society's "sacred" ideals. Durkheim, in short, provides an approach to historical investigation that underscores the significance of social conflict as well as the explanatory importance of cultural and political discourse.34
An adequate theoretical strategy, moreover, would also have to incorporate into this framework yet another crucial insight: namely, that
struggles over the "sacred center" - and coalition-building - unfold
within the "public sphere." This is an analytical insight which derives
more from Tocqueville (and Habermas) than it does from Durkheim.
Tocqueville and Habermas delineate a realm of social interaction
organized around the principle of solidarity.35In contrast to "the state,"
an apparatus of administration and coercion, and "civil society," the
realm of market relations, they mark off political society as a sphere of
"activities oriented toward voluntary concerted action ... and the discussion and collective resolution of public issues."36While they depict
political society as in continual tension with the state and civil society,
they insist that it is analytically irreducible to either realm. When consensus breaks down in the wider social order, this "public sphere"
633
becomes a fertile breeding-ground for oppositional groups aspiring to
transform the state and/or civil society. It is precisely in this domain
that broad-based political coalitions are discursively constructed and
that different groups vie over the legitimate definition of their society's
most "sacred"values.37 In the Progressive era, for example, educational
reformers pursued their cause within political society by engaging
intensively in public discourse through a multiplicity of such vehicles as
newspapers, pamphlets, journals, and voluntary associations.
An encompassing framework for the analysis of Progressive school
reform, then, would have to focus directly upon these discursive acts by
state-building elites and other social groups within the "public sphere,"
as well as upon broader structural transformations in the polity and
civil society. It would have to synthesize, as I have tried to demonstrate
above, the polity-centered and culturalist strategies. It is precisely such
a line of reasoning that I pursue in the substantive historical analysis
that follows. I begin with a discussion of the socioeconomic and political context of the crusade for Progressive school reform, drawing upon
some of the central insights of the polity-centered approach. I then proceed to analyze the educational discourse of the Progressive school
reformers themselves, and the role their agenda played in building
effective coalitions and creating a "sacred counter-center" of society.
Finally, I examine the manner in which educational Progressivism
triumphed in the public sphere and, having gained control over school
administration, implemented new programs in moral and civic education. Here I draw for illustrative purposes upon the specific case of
educational change in Boston, even though the drive for Progressive
school reform unfolded in not dissimilar ways in many other school
systems across the country. (My generalizations in the following pages,
however, do not extend as readily to the South, with its unique political
economy and culture, as they do to other regions, such as the Northeast, Midwest, and Far West.)
The causes and outcomes of educational Progressivism
The structural context of Progressive school reform
The movement for Progressive school reform owed a large part of its
distinctive outlook and institutional ambitions - not to mention its
eventual outcomes - to a complex set of socioeconomic and political
transformations. Among the former, perhaps the most far-reaching was
634
the decline of the "island communities" that had for so long constituted
the basis of American life. The development of extensive networks of
transportation and communication broke down well-established patterns of social segmentation and brought into existence a new stratum
of affluent commercial farmers and agricultural specialists, who together with merchants, bankers, and lawyers from their local communities would provide a link between moral reform crusades in the cities
and in the countryside.38 The growth of a modern corporate economy,
another new feature of the late nineteenth century, was also stimulated
by the spread of transportation and communications, as was urban
development.39 Boston, for example, became a thriving metropolis of
560,000 inhabitants, surrounded by a dozen smaller industrial centers
growing at a rate more than double the national average.4" Internal
migration from rural areas alone accounted for nearly one third of this
turn-of-the-century growth. But foreign immigration, particularly of
peasants from southern and eastern Europe, was responsible for an
even greater proportion of the increase.41The new immigrants typically
settled down in small urban ghettos, where they lived in filthy, overcrowded tenement houses, furthering a trend already well underway
toward ever-widening residential segmentation.42
The transformation of the American social structure during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries gained added significance in
the eyes of contemporaries from the manner in which it was refracted
through political changes. Structural developments such as urbanization and immigration became issues of particular urgency as foreign
newcomers rose to ever higher levels of local political influence. Since
the 1830s, American politics had been grounded in a system of urban
machines. Immigrants had offered their support to this system because
it granted them a diversity of valuable goods, not the least of which was
an affirmation of their right to belong fully to American society. So
effective were the bosses, ultimately, in drawing these newcomers into
politics that by the end of the century, immigrants had actually gained
control of many urban areas, including Boston.43 Those groups in
society, particularly the native middle classes and professionals, which
did not enjoy privileged access to these locally dominant organizations
found the rapid rise of the boss system a disturbing phenomenon. In
their view, the urban machines benefited some social groups at the
expense of others in all manner of local issues, from municipal services
to business contracts to control over public education. These actors
also expressed dismay over the close connections between such organizations and party politics. Partisan politics was highly community-
635
centered, with local neighborhoods the major focus of electoral campaigns, and urban machines accordingly served as indispensible instruments for the mobilization of a mass electorate.44
Complementary to this intense partisan politics was yet another feature
of the "party period" which would become increasingly salient with the
rise of Progressive reform ideology: namely, the extraction of patronage
from weak public bureaucracies as an indirect means of generating
popular support.45 During much of the nineteenth century, observes
Richard McCormick, "the government's most pervasive role was that of
promoting development by distributing resources and privileges to
individuals and groups."46Government was dominated by politicians
who used their access to the "spoils of office" to pursue a party-building strategy. The workings of such a patronage system were particularly
striking within school boards.47Well into the 1890s, the Boston school
board, for example, was governed, as one Progressive reformer complained, by "an inherently vicious system of sub-committees [of which]
there were [typically] no less than thirty."Deliberations of these subcommittees were evidently held in secret and there was much log-rolling. "Appointments and promotions were constantly made, not solely
for merit, but through influence and gross favoritism.... The schools
were burdened with provincialism in its most extreme and flagrant
form. The committees were petty despots, jealously guarding their prerogatives."48 Such was the nature of decision-making that even the
choice of textbooks became a matter for contestation among subcommittee factions; "if we can't have Frye's Geography,"one board
member was overheard as saying, "[then] they shan't have Metcalf's
Grammar."49
The last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of a
highly effective movement to dismantle these patronage arrangements.
The social actors who came to assume the leadership of this movement
were typically educational administrators, male career-oriented upperechelon teachers, and, in general, "a new breed of professional managers who made education a life-long career" - in a phrase, the "educational trust."5 In the state of Massachusetts, as in other parts of the
country, the members of this leadership group were a socially heterogeneous lot, coming from a wide range of religious, political, and occupational backgrounds. Many of them, however, did share certain social
characteristics, the most prominent among these being a native, AngloSaxon, middle-class upbringing, high educational achievement, and an
affinity for the Protestant Social Gospel and for Progressive politics. In
636
many respects these schoolmen were virtually indistinguishable from
the upper ranks of the new American middle class. Like members of
that stratum, who, in Richard Hofstadter's words, "multiplied along
with the great corporations and the specialized skills of corporate
society," they occupied a relatively optimistic position in the social
order and were well-integrated into its rapidly expanding scientificindustrial core.5'
These "administrative Progressives" have often been distinguished by
historians from their supposedly more moralistic counterparts, the
"pedagogical Progressives." But as we shall see in the pages that follow,
their goal, too, in advocating administrative centralization was to realize the ideal of a socially progressive and reformist State capable of
actively elevating the moral character of the citizenry. Only by wresting
control, they felt, over public schooling from the hands of self-interested politicians and handing it over to progressive-minded state officials
would the powerful forces threatening the morality and health of the
community be overcome. Purposeful state involvement would help to
maintain social cohesion in a time of alarming change and promote
moral advance. "Assuming [their own moral] standards to be the norm,"
observe David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, these new educational
reformers "had little hesitation in using powerful agencies [such as the
state] to shape others to their mold."52The Progressive educators, in
short, were driven by what was essentially a state-building ideology;
their material and ideal interests converged upon a single goal: namely,
state-building for the sake of moral uplift.
The school reform movement led by these state-building moral crusaders arose within a political context distinguished by the absence of a
powerful centralized state bureaucracy and of a class-based opposition.
These two structural factors made it possible for schoolmen and state
officials to pursue their agenda without much resistance from social
elites or from a radicalized working class. Such a situation was highly
specific to the United States; educational change occurred under significantly different conditions in Western Europe. Even when, as in the
case of the Third Republic in France, pedagogues and state officials
sought to use the schools as a weapon against clericalism and political
reaction, they did so through the imposition of a highly centralized and
state-controlled system of education.53 In England, too, bureaucratic
elites and members of the upper class were the primary levers of school
reform, and public education there tended to be highly stratified and
class-based.54 In the United States, on the other hand, educational
637
reforms were carried out not by bureaucratic elites who could count on
the existence of a powerful state apparatus to impose their agenda
upon society, but rather by a highly popular social movement. Even by
the early twentieth century, the federal bureaucracy was characterized,
in Stephen Skowronek's words, by "a hapless confusion of institutional
purposes, authoritative controls, and governmental boundaries."55No
bureaucratic elite could successfully exert influence over public schooling with such an instrument.
Educational Progressivism also met with relatively little resistance from
a unified laboring class or from capital.56Businessmen, it is true, were
quite heavily represented on local school boards, and business interest
groups did push extremely hard for certain innovations like vocational
education.57 The Commission on Industrial Education in Massachusetts, for example, issued demands for "nothing more nor less than the
establishment of a new kind of public education," whose major function would be "preparation for a vocation."58Such efforts to create an
independent school system ran afoul of professional educators on the
State Board, however, and the Commission was abolished in 1909 in a
vote of the Massachusetts state legislature. These developments were
generally representative of school systems across the country. Workers
were no more successful than businessmen in wresting control over
public education. The labor movement did become active in educational politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but typically, as Ira Katznelson and Margaret Weir point out, workers entered
the arena "either as labor or as ethnics ... not as a working class in a
more holistic sense."59In Boston, laborers who resisted the Progressive
school reform agenda identified themselves as Irish Catholics, not as a
unitary working class in self-conscious opposition to a capitalist elite.
Educational disputes were fought out, then, within a context marked by
the absence of a radical labor movement consistently in pursuit of its
"objective interests," in a Marxian sense.
Educational Progressivism'sdiscourse of "sacredideals"
Structural conditions in the American polity were thus highly favorable
to the implementation of a new educational reform agenda. Many of
the social and political tendencies discussed above, however - in particular, processes such as industrialization, urbanization, and the breakdown of social segmentation, not to mention the ascendancy of patronage democracy - had been in evidence a number of years prior to the
638
emergence of educational Progressivism. By themselves, none of these
developments had generated the rise of so committed and effective a
school reform crusade. What was required, in addition, was a far-reaching transformation in prevailing currents of moral and political discourse. A different vocabulary was needed through which to articulate
the hopes and apprehensions of the new era and to bind disparate
social actors together in coalitions that could effect sweeping institutional changes. Specifically, state-building officials and educational
reformers had to build broad-based coalitions with a variety of social
actors, as well as with less organized groups in society, in order to realize their ambitions of "getting the schools out of politics" and building a
new moral order. It was the pivotal contribution of the Progressive era
to produce a set of leaders capable of formulating such a reform agenda. As David Thelen puts it, "Not competition but cooperation
between different social groups ... was what distinguished progressivism.... The important fact about [it] was the degree of cooperation
between previously discrete social groups now united under [a singlel
banner." 6
For the Progressive school reformers, the key to constructing such a
broad-based coalition was their ability to appeal to "sacred"beliefs and
values pervasive in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Educational Progressives struck a responsive chord when they
drew selectively upon the discourse of classical republicanism - in particular, upon its highly evocative imagery of political "corruption" and
"redemption."61To paraphrase Walter Lippman, they "spoke to a
public willing to recognize as corrupt an incredibly varied assortment
of conventional acts."62The school reformers crystallized this widespread sense of corruption by pointing to the decay of institutions
necessary for the preservation of the normative order, and suggested
that such erosion was indicative of a broader disintegration in the
moral foundations of the Republic. The "sacred center" of American
society was in desperate need of revitalization; a "resacralization,"in
Durkheimian terms, of key aspects of public and domestic life would
have to be achieved through social reform. Drawing as well upon the
symbolism of Protestant millennialism, Progressive educators specifically called for the restructuring of school administration and for a fundamental transformation in the moral and civic instruction being
offered by the schools themselves.63 In their optimistic view, educational reform would help to redeem commonly shared American values
and bring ever closer to reality the new "democratic" society that was
the true American destiny.
639
As "the educational phase of American Progressivism writ large," the
discourse of the Progressive school reformers embodied both the
"social control" dimension so typical of Progressive rhetoric in general,
and its more hopeful and millennialist aspiration to a new "national
community." Educational Progressivism, on the one hand, shared with
other Progressive movements such as the crusade for municipal reform
the goal of dismantling threatening structures of political power in the
cities.64 It directed attention to the high degree of control exerted over
public schooling by urban machines which drew their support from
foreign-born voters and used positions in school administration as
"spoils of office." School reformers bemoaned this "politicization" of
the educational process and advocated in its stead "the centralization
of power in a small school board with members elected at large."65
They spoke of waging spiritual warfare against some of "the greatest
corrupters of public morals that ever blackened the pages of history,"
and through social reform of achieving "the regeneration of the
municipality,"broadly conceived.66 Of course, this attempt on the part
of educational Progressives to "depoliticize" urban school governance
was itself a political maneuver, a thrust for power behind the cloak of
administrative expertise. The rhetoric of objectivity - of taking public
schooling out of the hands of immigrant politicians and handing it over
to "experts"- resonated deeply with the material aspirations of the new
middle class.67
But the Progressive school reformers not only called for a sweeping
reorganization of educational politics; they also spoke out for a major
transformation in the moral and civic instruction offered in the schools
themselves. Many educational reformers expressed alarm, for example,
that in the midst of massive socioeconomic and political changes, a new
generation was coming of age that was woefully lacking in the citizenship skills needed to sustain a true democracy. "The disappointing
fact," one pedagogue declared in the Boston-based Journal of Education, "is that the voters are still too credulous, too much swayed by
impulse, passion, or prejudice; that their verdict on economic and
social questions is not adequate; [and] that they often elect men who do
not fairly represent the average of honesty and honor."68Under such
conditions, school reformers began to fear not only for their own class
interests, but also for the very future of the Republic, and to insist on
new courses of study to teach children the rights and duties of citizenship.69 Also of great concern to these educational thinkers was an
apparent increase in vice and crime in urban areas, a problem which
seemed to overlap closely with that of the appearance of vast numbers
640
of "new immigrants" in the poorer districts. The schools, insisted one
prominent educator, must "assimilate and amalgamate these people as
a part of our American race, and ... implant in their children ... the
7
Anglo-Saxon conception of righteousness, law, and order." Such pronouncements seemed to resonate most powerfully with the working
class and with native-born citizens of middling rank.
Alongside these more fearful and anxious currents in early twentieth
century educational discourse, however, was a powerful strain of optimism in regard to the capacity of the public schools to transform
American society. Educational leaders spoke in millennialist terms
about the morally regenerative powers of public schooling and about
the prospects for individual and social progress.71 No longer in the
modern age could the family, the churches, or the workplace serve the
functions of moral uplift; public education, though, could effectively
assume their former roles: "To an extent characteristic of no other institution," claimed one reformer, "save that of the state itself, the school
has power to modify the social order."72The specific character of this
"secularized millennialism" revealed itself most clearly in the discourse
of civic and moral instruction. Future citizens would learn "the spirit of
service" and gain experience in "democratic association" within the
schools by involving themselves in shared pursuits which "reflect[ed]
the life of the larger society."73 Moral and religious education, too,
would ideally foster a progressive type of social consciousness; indeed,
the school reformers envisioned a generalized Christian spirituality as
the basis for an "intentionally progressive" democracy striving toward
ever "more perfect union."74Once the external conditions of social and
political life had been reformed, and moral character, too, had been
purged of any anti-social influences, the "true Kingdom of God" could
at last be fully realized here on earth.75
The discourse of liberal individualism also played a crucial role in
defining the moral and political agenda of early twentieth-century
school reform. To a large extent, this liberal discourse continued to
posit the radical distinction, so widely accepted by nineteenth-century
Americans, between the "public" and "private" (or "domestic")
realms.76Within the former - a sphere of social life inhabited mostly by
men and encompassing market relations and party politics - "practical
virtues" such as self-reliance and industry were held to prevail. Increasingly, with the emergence of massive business firms and other formal
organizations, as well as with the expanding prestige of modern science
and technology, values such as rationality and efficiency also began to
641
be associated, at least in a normative sense, with public life.77 The
"domestic" realm, on the other hand, remained from this perspective
the exclusive province of women and revolved around such ideals as
moral purity, selflessness, and other so-called "feminine virtues." It was
the creative achievement of the Progressive reformers to justify their
own efforts to abolish patronage and other "corruption" precisely in
terms of normative standards derived from this "women's realm." Progressivism, that is, represented an attempt to reorganize the public
realm in terms of ideals such as community and "nonpartisanship,"
which until then had belonged only to domestic life.78
The aim Progressive reformers pursued, then, through moral and civic
instruction was that of a "cosmopolitan" social order. Often they
became so intent on realizing this ideal that they underestimated the
significance (and value) of ethnic, religious, regional and socioeconomic differences within the population. While the Progressive school
reformers refused to specify the content of the democratic order they
aspired to create, but rather spoke of it as an indeterminate and selfcorrecting process, implicitly they aimed for the resolution of social
differences in favor of an ever more inclusive and harmonious unity.
Moral and civic corruption would be forestalled through the cultivation
of a new type of "democratic character" which would exalt the "public
interest" over the narrow and self-interested concerns of "partisan"
groups.79 The only substantive ideal which educational Progressives
saw as legitimately guiding moral and civic education was, ironically,
the achievement of individual "growth,"autonomy, and self-realization.
John Dewey, for instance, declared that the aim of the schools should
be to liberate the child, to cultivate in him or her a capacity to confront
new and unanticipated situations with imagination and creativity. While
Dewey, in Lawrence Cremin's words, "formulated the aim of education
in social terms, he was convinced that education would read its successes ultimately in the changed behaviors, perceptions, and insights of
individual human beings."8 This subjectivist aspect of the Progressives'
discourse, too, attracted many social groups, particularly the new
middle classes, to their cause.
It was by thus invoking these ideals of individual self-realization, together with images and symbols from civic republicanism and evangelical Protestantism, that the educational Progressives were able to draw a
wide variety of social actors into their struggles for school reform. They
were able to appeal in this way to many groups which did not share any
single distinguishing social characteristic.8' Some of those who became
642
involved at the "grassroots level" were members of the urban workingclass.82 Other supporters of Progressive school reform came from the
broad new "middle stratum" of American society - from the growing
ranks of "professionals" in such areas as law, medicine, social work, and
administration, and from the new elite of business managers and commercial farmers engaged in scientific agriculture. Still others were
members of an older stratum - the shopkeepers, artisans, clerks, and
merchants who constituted the broad "middling ranks" of the late nineteenth-century social order. In no case did the "objective interests" of
these or any other actors necessarily predispose them toward the
school reform agenda. These diverse groups of businessmen, workers,
and middle class civic reformers each possessed multiple alternative
interests and identities which potentially could have been activated
through public discourse. All could potentially have coalesced around
other educational ideals, or failed to get involved in the school reform
crusade at all. It was the symbolism and imagery of educational
Progressivism that united these disparate actors behind a single cause.
The drivefor Progressiveschool reform
The discourse, then, of the Progressive school reformers was a major
element behind the transformation of public school systems and of
moral and civic education after the late nineteenth century. In part, this
discourse was a reflection of far-reaching socioeconomic and political
developments during this period, but to a significant extent it was also
the product of internal tendencies specific to the domain of American
culture itself. The traditions of evangelical Protestantism, civic republicanism, and even of liberal individualism upon which this ideology was
based had been forged in an historical epoch not yet faced with the
challenges of massive industrialization and of large-scale cultural and
political heterogeneity. In the absence of a particularly compelling
world-view that helped to make sense of these structural developments
and provided a comprehensive program for responding collectively to
them, a broad-based reform movement in public education could not
arise. A new rhetoric was needed to define the shared educational
interests and aspirations of different social groups, to call them into
action, and to frame the ensuing debate in such a way as to constrain
the universe of possible legitimate outcomes. It was the great achievement of cultural innovators such as John Dewey and the other Progressive reformers to formulate precisely such a discourse, to refashion old
symbols, images, and ideals into a new agenda for redeeming the unful-
643
filled promise of American education. Only by taking account of this
achievement is it possible to grasp the particular timing of Progressive
school reform - a task for which one-sidedly structuralist perspectives
are clearly ill-suited.
The Progressive education movement began to take shape in the
1890s, when Dewey and his followers started engaging in political discussions and forming professional organizations within the public
sphere. This domain, once the site of vigorous political discourse
during the heyday of Jacksonian democracy, had deteriorated later in
the nineteenth century as the franchise, which the Jacksonians had
extended at the beginning of the "party period," had become severely
constricted through registration, literacy, and citizenship requirements.83 But with the decline of electoral politics - and of the longestablished monopoly enjoyed by mass-based parties in the representation of interests - alternative modes of political activity had began to
flourish in their stead. The result of this historic shift away from the
party system, as Daniel Rodgers points out, had been "to spring open
the political arena.... This was the context within which maverick politicians could vault into office and 'reform' (and 'anti-reform') coalitions
of all sorts could blossom."84 Indeed, the 1890s and the early decades
of the twentieth century witnessed a sudden proliferation of voluntary
associations and reform efforts of various kinds unequalled since the
breakdown of the "rule of notables" and the rise of mass democracy in
the age of Jackson. It was within this arena for collective discourse over
the "public good" that crusades for social and political reform, prominent among them the movement for educational Progressivism, crystallized and made appeals to competing actors.
Progressive educators gained much vital support from the wide variety
of middle class groups which joined their cause, such as civic reform
leagues, city businessmen's associations, and diverse professional
organizations.85 Moral and civic reform crusades also constituted a
broad infrastructure which the school reformers were able to tap into
and to exploit profitably for their own not dissimilar purposes.86
Among the most important of these were women's associations such as
the social settlements movement, which itself was engaged in an intense
competition with patronage systems in urban neighborhoods.87 In
Massachusetts the Woman's Christian Temperance Union proved to
be an even more significant resource; its calls for the teaching of "scientific temperance" in the schools made it a key asset in the drive to
morally "purify"the local school board.88 In 1879 the Massachusetts
644
state legislature had passed a School Suffrage Act which made women
in the state eligible to vote for and to serve on school committees. A
Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association had been formed the following year "to make suffrage effective"; it joined forces with the
W.C.T.U. in pushing for a far-reaching reform of the school board, if
necessary through the election of women committee-members. "In our
cities," declared one middle-class women's activist in "An Appeal to
Massachusetts Women," "one indisputable reason for women on the
school committee is the necessity of keeping our schools out of politics.... Women are not yet rewarded for political influence ... and so
they may offset ... the cheap politician, whose first duty seems to be to
serve a constituency and not the schools."89
Educational Progressives also derived extensive benefits from their own
professional journals and organizations; through them they engaged in
a constant dialogue with one another and disseminated their ideas
within the broader public realm. In New England, the Journal of
Education became one of the leading advocates of Progressive reform,
devoting many articles to the ideals and accomplishments of the school
reform movement in Massachusetts. The School Board Review, Educational Review, and the Boston Teachers'Newsletter also enjoyed a wide
readership in the region, while the Proceedings and Addresses of the
National Education Association (founded in 1857) communicated the
most current ideas of Progressive educators and included extensive
bulletins and updates on schooling nationwide. Reports by various
N.E.A. committees were also widely read and served to publicize the
views of the school reform movement on issues ranging from the
organization of urban school systems to moral and civic instruction
within the classroom.9" In 1906 a new organization concerned specifically with moral curriculum and pedagogy was founded - the Religious
Education Association - and almost immediately its journal began to
attract a national readership. Numerous conferences were held as well
on the topic of classroom pedagogy, including N.E.A.-sponsored meetings on Character Education and an International Moral Education
Congress in The Hague in 1912. After 1918 many of these issues were
taken up directly by the Progressive Education Association, and later,
in the 1920s, by new Progressive-minded organizations such as the
Character Education Institution.9'
645
The triumph of educational Progressivism
Despite the considerable resources that the crusade for educational
Progressivsim commanded through extensive social organization, not
to mention the persuasive and legitimating effects of its discourse, not
all segments of American society ultimately proved receptive to its
cause. Indeed, the Progressives met with stiff resistance from social
groups which held, at least implicitly, to a radically different interpretation of what constituted the "sacred center" of the American republic.
Of course, it is true that the structural organization of the early twentieth-century polity continued to discourage the emergence of any
class-based opposition to Progressive school reform. But many actors
did nonetheless come out against the efforts of reform-minded schoolmen and state officials. These opponents of school reform, many of
whom were Irish Catholics or "new immigrants" raised in a very different social and political tradition, could not easily understand the
reformist zeal of the Progressive schoolmen or their peculiar commitment to moral and civic renewal. In particular, they found unacceptable
the Progressive ideal of a morally activist state, which through agencies
such as public education would seek to promote the spiritual regeneration of the polity. For them, neither the state nor public education
represented a proper means to moral purification, and they steadfastly
opposed any attempt to use these institutions to recreate American
society in the reformers' own image. In alliance with localists, "the
native conservative and the politically indifferent, [these immigrants]
formed a potent mass that limited the range and achievements" of educational Progressivism.2
In Boston, Progressive leaders struck their first major blow against ethnic and localist opponents of school reform in 1897, when a group of
educators and successful businessmen formed a non-partisan organization called the Public School Association and dedicated it to "driving
out ... grafters and incomponents from the School Board."93Members
of the P.S.A. described this group as "without distinction of party, race
or religion on behalf of right standards in ... administration of the
schools," and accused the school committee as then constituted of
"inefficiency, partisanship, and provincialism."94By remaining "aloof"
from sectarianism and appealing to citizens' unselfish and "non-partisan" concerns for the welfare of the schools and for the "public interest," the P.S.A. began winning support for its program in the electoral
arena and increased its representation on the school committee. In
1898 "partymanagers on both sides merely laughed at, and would have
646
nothing to do with the new movement."95But in 1899 it succeeded in
electing four of its candidates to the school board, and the following
year, another five, and finally in 1901, with the election of seven additional candidates, it gained a complete majority on the twenty-four
member committee. Many of the PS.A.'s candidates were backed by
the Democratic Party, a stronghold of localism and of Irish Catholic
support, as well as by the Republican Party, despite the fact that most
of them were upper-class Bostonians of Anglo-Saxon descent. With
such a majority firmly in hand, the P.S.A. was able to take away the
power of the sub-committees and to confer supreme authority over
educational decision-making to the school superintendent.
In 1902, however, widespread opposition to Progressive school reform
began to take shape among Irish Catholics and other ethnic and working-class voters who were coming to see school centralization as profoundly inegalitarian and a threat to local communities. The P.S.A.'s
efforts met with growing resistance from groups such as the predominantly Irish Building Trades Council and other labor organizations, as
well as from Catholic leaders who identified middle-class educational
reform with anti-Catholic sentiments. Candidates backed by the P.S.A.
were popularly linked to - and anxiously sought to repudiate - nativist
organizations such as the Immigrant Restriction League and the Independent Women's Voters Association. The main Catholic organ, The
Pilot, declared before one election that "at least [Progressive candidates] have learned that when a pitcher seeks a battle with the stone, it
is always the worse for the pitcher. [But] we see no reason why the
P.S.A. should ask for or expect a single Catholic's support merely
because they have found it bad policy to consort with a gang of
bigots."96Such statements had a decisive impact: in the 1902 elections
the P.S.A. majority on the school committee was significantly reduced,
and in the following year it was completely eliminated. Had it not been
for the Catholics' inability to draw other groups together into a more
enduring counter-coalition spanning ethnic and religious lines, educational Progressivism in Boston might well have faded away. Yet the Irish
failed dramatically to build such a coalition, in part because they
pitched their own rhetoric primarily as a response to Protestant nativism, rather than as a positive enunciation of localist principles.
Indeed, the Irish Catholics themselves, along with other segments of
the Boston population, were soon won over by the centralizing
discourse of the school reformers. For the educational Progressives
had continued to reach out to native-born and Irish citizens, whose
647
concerns over the school system's ineffectiveness were beginning to
outweigh their diverse religious allegiances.97 In 1905 these Progressive
reformers dealt the patronage system and its supporters a final, fatal
blow when a prominent Boston businessman and school committee
member, James Storrow, drafted a petition to the Massachusetts state
legislature for institution of a five-member school board. The signers of
the petition, also published separately as a pamphlet entitled "Shall the
Boston School Committee be Reorganized?" were, as Storrow pointed
out, "resident[s] of all sections of the city... both Republican and
Democratic,... Catholics, Protestants and Hebrews ... and represent[ative of] nearly every race among the population."98 Approval by the
state legislature's Committee on Cities was required for a revision in
the Boston city charter, and such approval proved easily forthcoming.
In the ensuing school committee election, the Progressive reformers,
once again sponsored by the P.S.A., won critical support from both the
Democratic and Republican parties, while Storrow himself was explicitly endorsed by the Boston Catholic Archdiocese. As The Pilot
expressed it, "Mr. Storrow is a Protestant, but he has lots of admirers ... among the Catholic clergy and laity alike ... for his sincere
devotion to the best interests of those citizens who most need the
public schools."99Storrow and the four Progressives swept the election.
After 1905, the Public School Association retained effective control
over the Boston school committee. An Irish Catholic politician (John F
Fitzgerald, or "Honey Fitz") was elected mayor of Boston that same
year, one of several Irishmen who would dominate that city's politics
for years to come. But the Yankee-dominated progressive crusade continued to hold sway over public schooling, so successful was it in elevating the shared values of the American "civil religion" over ethnocultural or ideological differences. As a superintendent's report noted in
1906, as of "January 1, 1906, the schools of Boston ceased to be governed by a board having a provincial attitude, and came under the control of a board having a national attitude towards the schools."1""In
short, a school committee composed of twenty-four members since
1875 was cut to five in 1905; over the next 15 years, only fifteen different individuals would serve on it, all but four of them being members of
the P.S.A.'' Such a development was not unique to the Boston system.
Indeed, it was soon replicated in urban school systems across Massachusetts, and throughout much of the rest of the country. A nationwide
pattern of centralization emerged in which the average number of
school board members was reduced in cities of 100,000 or more from
21.5 in 1893 to 10.2 in 1913.102Ward-based school boards - the key
648
targets of educational Progressivism - were almost completely eliminated, and new members of centralized school boards were either
appointed by reform-minded city officials or elected at large. Similar
transformations characteristically occurred after a lag of several years
in smaller towns and rural areas (see Table 1).1"3
Curricularand pedagogical outcomes of Progressiveschool reform
The consequences of educational Progressivism extended beyond
school administration into the realm of classroom instruction itself.
Having consolidated their institutional power, the Progressives proceeded in the period between 1910 and 1930 to implement sweeping
reforms in curriculum and pedagogy. The state of Massachusetts in the
early 1900s was faced with a severe crisis of new immigration. As
Marvin Lazerson explains it, "When the U.S. Immigration Commission
undertook its extensive nationwide survey, 'The Children of Immigrants in the Schools,' in 1908-1909, [it found that] public schools in
four [Massachusetts] cities - Boston, Chelsea, Fall River, and New
Bedford - contained more than 60 percent children of foreign-born,
while Worcester and Lowell were just below that percentage." 04 This
extraordinary influx of children, many of them non-English speaking,
Table 1. Size of big-city school boards, 1890-1930.
City
189()'
1930
Baltimore
Boston
Buffalo
26
24
No board
21
26
17
9
42
46
42
47
21
12
9
5
7
11
7
7
7
15
7
15
15
12
7
Chicago
Cleveland
Detroit
Los Angeles
Milwaukee
New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
St. Louis
San Francisco
Source: Joseph M. Cronin, The Control of Urban Schools: Perspective on the Power of
Educational Reformers (New York: Free Press, 1973), 44-49; 70-78; 92-93; 96-100;
109-119; 109-126; 130-135.
' If school board size was still increasing in the early 1890s, its peak figure is given.
649
posed a number of enormous challenges, to which local educational
leaders responded with new courses of study in "Americanization" and
in "socialization."""'As the state commissioner of education put it in
1914: "The most conspicuous present need is [for] a far more complete
recognition of the responsibility of the State for the education of its citizens."'16 The Progressive school reformers introduced new programs
in vocational education as well and a system of formalized tracking curricular innovations which they supplemented with the standardized
testing techniques then being developed by educational psychology.
The underlying purpose of formalized tracking and standardized testing was to socialize young working-class schoolchildren into the emerging urban corporate economy of twentieth-century America by training
them to be disciplined, productive, and efficient laborers. "Skill and
behavior training were stressed," observe David Cohen and Marvin
Lazerson; "students were selected for occupation strata based on ability [as determined by educational testing], and matched to occupations
through counseling and training."1"7 As the Boston School Committee
expressed it in 1909: "Everything [within the classroom] must conform
as closely as possible to actual industrial work in real life ... [Bloth
product and method must be subjected to the same commercial tests,
as far as possible, as apply to actual industry.""'0Clearly, this particular
dimension of educational Progressivism had its roots in the technocratic, middle-class wing of the movement for school reform. This new
stratum, in conjunction with native upper-class Protestants, sought to
transform public education - much as they sought to reshape prisons,
mental institutions, welfare, and agencies for juvenile delinquency - in
accordance with their own time-bound ideals of efficiency, rationality,
and modern science."'9 Standardized testing, for example, they regarded as a more "scientific" way of determining schoolchildren's likely
occupational attainment, and thereby of allocating them to different
channels within the educational system. '0 The effect of these new practices was often profoundly undemocratic: they relegated working-class
and immigrant populations to the very bottom of the educational hierarchy and consigned them to a fate that can only be characterized as
unchallenging, regimented, and culturally oppressive."'
Yet in attempting to meet the new challenges of the day, "pedagogical
Progressives" also set out to develop new courses of study in "character
formation"and "citizenshiptraining"whose aim was the construction of a
more cosmopolitan type of American identity, one based on their ideals
of a truly "democratic,""non-sectarian" morality (see Tables 2 and 3).
Table 2. Percent of school systems reporting various general provisions for character education in 193
General provisions
126 cities
under 2,500
140 cities
2,500-5,000()
142 cities
5,000-10,000V
126 cities
10,000-30,000c
81
72
73
84
74
80
82
70
75
9
7
5
16
15
7
13
11
1()
59
63
65
67
67
71
65
63
70
Through classes in regular subjects
Elementary schools
Junior high schools
Senior high schools
80
68
73
Through separate class periods for character education
Elementary schools
Junior high schools
Senior high schools
9
6
6
Through out-of-class school activities
Elementary schools
Junior high schools
Senior high schools
59
58
61
Source: National Education Association, Character Education, Tenth Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: De
Five of these cities reported that they had no junior high schools.
h Two of these cities reported that they had no junior high schools.
cFour of these cities reported that they had no junior high schools.
Table3. Percent of school systems reporting the use of bulletins and course-of-study materials on cha
Bulletins or courses
of study used
126 cities
under 2,500
140 cities
2,500-5,000"
142 cities
5,000-10,000h
126 cities
10,000-30,000c
Special bulletins or courses of study prepared by local school staff
Elementary schools
Junior high schools
Senior high schools
13
11
13
12
13
11
18
15
8
13
11
11
21
23
22
27
20
20
Special bulletins or outlines prepared by outside agencies
Elementary schools
Junior high schools
Senior high schools
25
21
21
29
26
24
Specific suggestions included in regular course-of-study bulletins
Elementary schools
Junior high schools
Senior high schools
19
15
13
11
9
7
21
17
14
17
10
11
Source: National Education Association, Character Education, Tenth Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: D
Five of these cities reported that they had no junior high schools.
b Two of these cities reported that
they had no junior high schools.
c Four of these cities
reported that they had no junior high schools.
a
652
These new courses of study utilized both "direct"and "indirect"modes
of instruction. The former, "direct" method was organized around a
curriculum designed specifically for the teaching of "Morals and Manners" and "Good Citizenship." In Boston, such instruction was given,
for example, every morning in a period explicitly set aside for "opening
exercises."'2 The "indirect" method, by contrast, sought to impart
moral and civic virtues inductively through the normal academic subject-matter. The study of English literature, for instance, was seen to
"offer... opportunities to develop an appreciation and love of beauty,
and to emphasize the desirable and undesirable qualities of human
character in the study of the great figures of fiction and biography."History and social studies were "of great worth in developing ideals and
giving models for imitation," although the key figures in historical
accounts were as likely to be ordinary citizens as great national leaders
and statesmen. Mathematics, too, offered valuable "opportunities for
the development of traits of character such as truthfulness, clear thinking, accuracy, neatness, and a sense of order."'3 Courses of study in
morality and citizenship nearly always included quite extensive lists of
supplementary readings, as well as a variety of discussion topics and
suggested classroom activities. After 1900, the cultivation of virtues
through a combination of such methods replaced the McGuffey'sReaders and other standard curricular materials of the nineteenth century."14
Changes in methods of classroom pedagogy mirrored these developments in the curriculum of moral and civic instruction. Schoolteachers
in Boston, as in many other parts of the United States, continued to
draw heavily, for example, upon Biblical materials. Direct Bible teaching was permitted in public school buildings by regular teachers; most
commonly, Biblical passages were read "without comment" as a part of
the opening exercises. On the other hand, after the turn of the century,
religious education in general became a far less prominent dimension
of moral and civic education. The Bible lost much of its significance in
the new courses of study as a strictly religious text, and was increasingly
used to illustrate secular and universalistic moral principles."5 Wherever religious education was actually offered, it was in a generalized
form of Christianity rather than in the specific tenets of Protestantism.'
16
In addition to gaining a far more secular character, moral and civic
education began to be more individualistic and "child-centered."To be
sure, as noted above, the new programs implemented by the "pedagogical Progressives" did feature a marked impulse toward class imposition
653
and cultural coercion. The typical classroom practices and pedagogical
methods of the period also evinced a considerable dreariness and
monotony. Students, for example, were often required to remain seated
at their desks for long periods without moving freely about the classroom; they were obliged to sit through teachers' lectures, readings, and
explanations without comment, and to speak up only when specifically
called upon. Classrooms were typically arranged in rows of desks and
chairs facing the instructor's desk and/or the blackboard, rather than
one another in ways that would facilitate group learning and/or more
individualized activities."7 Personal differences were often submerged
within a pedagogical environment stressing uniformity and conformism, which did much to discourage critical reflection upon pregiven
rules and constraints, assumptions about authority, and established
practices and expectations for social behavior and moral judgment.
Even as late as 1952, John Dewey still felt the need to point out that
"I[the fundamental authoritarianism of the old education persists in
various modified forms."'1
Significantly, however, the new courses of study in character formation
and citizenship also pursued at least at first the goal of moral uplift.
They aspired to cultivate a new type of personality which would consider itself, above all, a citizen of the "national community.""19For
many Progressive school reformers, such an emancipation from the
constraints of pregiven ethnic and religious traditions would mean an
increasing emphasis on individual self-realization. Young children were
to be encouraged to "rise above" the limitations of their particular ethical communities, and thereby to develop their own individual capacities for moral or practical judgment. Far from emphasizing conformity,
the new courses of study valued "cooperation" and a spirit of cosmopolitanism; they sought to make "growth" possible and to foster the
moral autonomy of the individual. Many schoolteachers, for example,
stressed group study and discussion over lecturing and rote-learning;
debates, dramatizations, storytelling, and "socialized recitations" were
among the significant activities often introduced. Greater student participation was also encouraged in the making of a variety of pedagogical
choices, including rules of classroom behavior, rewards and penalties
and their enforcement, and the employment of diverse instructional
materials.'12
Such developments, once again, were not unique to educational reform
in Massachusetts. One of the most fascinating yet also most neglected
aspects of American educational history is the wave of curricular
654
reform which swept across much of the U.S. in the early twentieth century. In 1917, to take one example, an organization called the Character
Education Institution sponsored a nationwide competition for the best
children's Code of Morals, and then another one in 1921 for the best
moral education plan; the winners quickly became models for emulation in public school systems across the country. By the early 1930s,
nearly every state and most large cities featured specialized courses of
study in both character education and citizenship training. Many smaller cities and rural areas also manifested a growing emphasis on Progressive educational ideals.'2' Part of the impetus for these developments originated, of course, in the "new immigration." But innovative
programs also appeared in parts of the United States relatively unaffected by immigration and revealed a basic content and approach strikingly underdetermined by status conflict or by a mere drive for social
integration. As a group of Boston schoolmen put it, "Living and working together in peaceful cooperation is one of the major accomplishments in a successful democracy." This would become one of the key
components of classroom instruction within the schools.122 A more
cosmopolitan and individualistic type of personality was to form the
new basis of American civilization.'23 The public schools were to
impart, in the words of one prominent curriculum planner, a "constantly growing consciousness of membership in more and ever larger
groups of society - a sense of belonging not only to the family group
but to the school group; not only to an economic class and a religous
sect, but to the community group, to the national group, and to the
world-society."124
The new programs in moral and civic education which the "pedagogical Progressives" institutionalized remained securely in place for a
number of decades after their original reform movement had achieved
its earliest triumphs. Not until the last quarter-century, in fact, with the
rise of the "values clarification" school and the "moral development"
approach of educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, would there
be another such moment of far-reaching change in typical patterns of
moral curriculum and pedagogy. In retrospect, it is evident that the
Progressive school reformers not only succeeded in forging a broadbased coalition around their vision of a "sacred counter-center of
society," but that they also framed the agenda in terms of which all subsequent educational discourse would unfold. The powerful independent influence their pedagogical ideals exerted in the later history of
American schooling - and the very nature of the courses of study they
inspired Progressive school reformers to implement - speak eloquently
655
to the role which ideals and symbolic formations can play in shaping
cultural and institutional change.'25 Not structural 'transformations
alone, but also the very terms of educational discourse itself during the
Progressive era were decisive in influencing the course of moral and
educational transformations to the present day.
Conclusion: The analysis of cultural and institutional change
What, then, is finally to be learned from this historical case-study of
educational Progressivism? What are the lessons it can teach us? The
fundamental aims of this paper have been three-fold. First, by referring
continually back to the empirical evidence on Progressive school
reform, it has sought to evaluate systematically the explanatory usefulness of alternative strategies for cultural and institutional analysis. It
has demonstrated that none of these theoretical perspectives is completely satisfactory in itself, that while one-sidedly structuralist and
voluntarist strategies may both contribute important historical insights,
they fail to make sense of the many dimensions of a complex case such
as that of Progressive school reform.
Second, this article has presented the outlines of an alternative explanatory strategy, one that combines principles from the most sophisticated of structuralist approaches, the polity-centered strategy, with an
emphasis on the potentially autonomous role of cultural discourses. In
discussing this alternative strategy, it has drawn explicitly upon the classical theories of Tocqueville and Durkheim, as well as upon more recent
contributions to cultural and political sociology. From Durkheim it has
derived the notion of a dynamic interplay of power and discourse in the
construction of collective identities and of movements for cultural and
institutional reform. It has also put to use his insight that these diverse
historical actors carry out their struggles largely by seeking to gain control over the most "sacred"categories of public discourse. In this manner it has made a new case for Durkheim's continued relevance for historical sociology. From Tocqueville, on the other hand, (and Habermas)
this article has derived the insight that struggles over "the sacred" unfold
within a domain of social life conceptually distinct from the "state"and
"civil society."It is within a "public sphere" organized around the principles of solidarity and political participation that collective identities and
interests are defined and broad-based coalitions forged.
Finally, this article has turned to the problem of educational change in
656
the Progressive era itself, and elaborated a suggestive and exploratory
argument about its causes and eventual outcomes. Its focus has been on
the Progressive school reformers' quest for a new moral and civic order
through sweeping innovations in educational administration and the
cultivation of a "democratic character" within the classroom. This article has shown how educational Progressives sought to fulfill the promise
of American democracy and to ensure social stability in an era of farreaching change by reaching out to other social actors and by forging
effective coalitions within the public sphere. Against resistance from
diverse ethnic and working-class groups wedded to the educational
status quo, these school reformers succeeded in building a powerful
movement around the discourse of moral and political resacralization.
For much too long, the analysis of cultural and institutional change has
been mired in a stagnant methodological debate between various competing forms of structuralist and voluntarist reductionism. The time has
long since come for historical sociology to move well beyond this stale
dichotomy. Through a study of Progressive school reform this article
has sought to point in the direction of a promising alternative strategy.
Acknowledgments
I thank Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Jeff Goodwin, David Riesman,
Theda Skocpol, and the Theory and Society Editors for their many
helpful comments and suggestions. This research was supported by a
Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of
Eduation.
Notes
1. John Dewey, "The School and Society," in John Dewey on Education, ed. Reginald D. Archambault (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964 118991), 310.
2. But see, Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American
Classrooms, 1890-1980 (New York: Longman, 1984); Barbara Finkelstein,
"Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in American Primary Schools, 18201880," Ph.D. dissertation (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University,
1970); and Stephen M. Yulish, The Search for a Civic Religion: A History of the
Character Education Movement in America, 1890-1935 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980).
3. Samuel Bowles and Herb Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational
Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976),
37.
657
4. See, Michael Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in
Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1968); and Michael Katz, Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America (New York: Praeger, 1971).
5. Charles Leslie Glenn, Jr., The Myth of the Common School (Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 5.
6. Richard Rubinson, "Class Formation, Politics, and Institutions: Schooling in the
United States," American Journal of Sociology 92 (1986): 527. For examples of
the "class struggle" approach, see: Samuel Bowles and Herb Gintis, Schooling in
Capitalist America; David Nasaw, Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public
Schooling in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Paul
E. Peterson, The Politics of School Reform, 1870-1940 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985); and Julia Wrigley, Class Politics and Public Schools: Chicago, 1900-1950 (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1982).
7. See, Frank Tracy Carlton, Economic Influences upon Educational Progress in the
United States, 1820-1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965); Philip
R.V. Curoe, Educational Attitudes and Policies of Organized Labor in the United
States (New York: Teachers College Press, 1926); Sidney L. Jackson, America's
Strugglefor Free Schools: Social Tension and Education in New England and New
York, 1827-1842 (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Public Affairs, 1941);
Ira Katznelson and Margaret Weir, Schooling for All: Class, Race, and the Decline
of the Democratic Ideal (New York: Basic Books, 1985); and Julia Wrigley, Class
Politics and Public Schools.
8. See, Robert Fishlow, "The American Common School Revival: Fact or Fancy?" in
Industrialization in Two Systems, ed. Henry Rosovsky (New York: Wiley, 1966);
Carl Kaestle and Maris Vinovskis, Education and Social Change in NineteenthCentury Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); and John
Meyer, David Tyack, Joanne Nagel, and Audri Gordon, "Public Education as
Nation-Building in America, 1870-1930," American Journal of Sociology 85
(1979): 591-613.
9. Boston School Committee, Course in Citizenship Through Character Development: School Document No. 10 (Boston: School Committee, 1924), 14.
10. David P. Thelen, "Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism," Journal of
American History 56 (1969): 341.
I1. For examples of this perspective, see, Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All; and
Richard Rubinson, "Class Formation, Politics, and Institutions."
12. Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All, 49.
13. Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All, 68.
14. Perhaps the best example of this approach is, David J. Rothman, The Discovery of
the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1971). For another important study (although not specifically concerned
with the American case) see, Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, tr.
Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1979).
15. Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux [Hill
and Wang], 1967), 166. See also, Louis Galambos, "The Emerging Organizational
Synthesis in Modern American History," Business History Review 44 (1970):
279-290; David Tyack, "City Schools: Centralization and Control at the Turn of
the Century," in Building the Organizational Society: Essays on Associational Activities in Modern America, ed. Jerry Israel (New York: Free Press, 1972);
David Tyack, The One Best System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974);
658
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28
29.
Robert Wiebe, "The Social Functions of Public Education," American Quarterly
21 (1969): 147-164; and Robert Wiebe, The Segmented Society: An Introduction
to the Meaning of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
Galambos, "The Emerging Organizational Synthesis," 281.
Daniel Rodgers, "In Search of Progressivism," Reviews of American History I)
(1982): 119.
See, Carl Kaestle, "Moral Education and Common Schools in America: A Historian's View," The Journal of Moral Education 13 (1984): 101-111; and David
Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue. Public School Leadership in
America, 1820-1980 (New York: Harper and Row, 1982).
Examples of this approach include: Joseph Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status
Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana: IL: University of Illinois Press, 1970); and Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Random House, 1955).
See, Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation of the School (New York: Random
House, 1961); and Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan
Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).
For a discussion of moments of "collective effervescence" in educational history,
see, Emile Durkheim, The Evolution of Educational Thought, tr. Peter Collins
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977 [1904-05]). See M. Emirbayer, "The
Shaping of a Virtuous Citizenry," Studies in American Political Development
(forthcoming).
Cremin, The Transformation of the School, viii.
Theda Skocpol, "Cultural Idioms and Political Ideologies in the Revolutionary
Reconstruction of State Power: A Rejoinder to Sewell," Journal of Modern History 57 (1985): 91.
See, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Theoretical Logic in Sociology, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
See, Robert Wuthnow, Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in
the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).
See, Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, editors, Bringing
the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Richard L.
McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age
of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986);
Ann Orloff and Theda Skocpol, "Why Not Equal Protection?: Explaining the
Politics of Public Spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States 1880s1920," American Sociological Review 490 (1984): 726-750; Martin Shefter,
"Party, Bureaucracy, and Political Change in the United States," in Political Parties: Development and Decay, ed. Louis Maisel and Joseph Cooper (Beverly Hills:
Sage, 1978), 211-265; and Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State.
The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982).
See, Alessandro Pizzorno, "On the Rationality of Democratic Choice," Telos 63
(1985): 41-69.
See, Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, tr. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
See, Edward Shils, The Constitution of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982); Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in
Time of Trial (New York: Seabury Press 1974), Robert Bellah and Phillip
Hammond, Varietiesof Civil Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1980).
659
30. See, William Sewell, Jr., "Ideologies and Social Revolutions," Journal of Modern
History 57 (1985): 57-85; and Ann Swidler, "The Uses of Culture in Historical
Explanation," Paper presented at 82nd Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, 1987.
31. See, Durkheim, The Evolution of Educational Thought; and Emile Durkheim, The
Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, tr. Joseph Swain (New York, Free Press,
1965 119121).
32. See, Mark Traugott, "Durkheim and Social Movements," European Journal of
Sociology 25 (1984): 325; and Neil Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (New
York: Free Press, 1966). For a different perspective, see, Charles Tilly, "Useless
Durkheim," in As Sociology Meets History (New York: Academic Press, 1981),
95-108.
33. Robert Bellah, "Introduction," in Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society, ed.
Robert Bellah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), iv-lv.
34. See, Jeffrey C. Alexander, "Durkheimian Sociology and Cultural Studies Today,"
in Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1-22; and Randall Collins, "The Durkheimian Tradition in Conflict Sociology," in Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies,
107-28.
35. See, Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, tr. George Lawrence (New
York: Doubleday, 1969 11835; 184()).
36. Jeffrey Weintraub, "Proposal for an Essay on Tocqueville," Unpublished manuscript (Cambridge: Harvard Sociology Department, 1985), 2.
37. See also, Jiirgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article, New
German Critique 3 (1974): 45-55; and Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, tr. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, M.I.T. Press, 1989
119631).
38. See, Wiebe, The Segmented Society.
39. See, Sean Dennis Cashman, America in the Age of the Titans: The Progressive Era
and World WarI (New York: New York University Press, 1988).
40. Richard M. Abrams, Conservatism in a Progressive Era: Massachusetts Politics,
1900-1912 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 28. Abrams points out
that in the final decade of the nineteenth century, "the population of Haverhill
increased 35.6 percent; that of Worcester, Lawrence, Springfield, and Fall River
grew about 40 percent; that of Fitchburg, 43 perent; of Brockton, 47 percent; and
of New Bedford, 53.3 percent."
41. Charles Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America (New York:
Macmillan, 1967), 136. See also, Sean Dennis Cashman, America in the Age of
Titans; Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That
Made the American People (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951); Alan M. Kraut, The
Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in America Society, 1880-1921 (Arlington
Heights, Ill: Harlan Davidson, 1982); Arthur Mann, Yankee Reformers in the
Urban Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954); and Barbara Solomon,
Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956).
42. See, Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 187019() (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).
43. See, Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism: 1885-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); Richard
660
44.
45.
46,
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
Hofstadter, The Age of Reform; and Martin Shefter, "The Emergence of the Political Machine: An Alternative View," in Theoretical Perspectives in Urban Politics,
ed. Willis Hawley and Michael Lipsky (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1976), 14-44.
See, Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American
Politics (New York: Norton, 1970); Paul Kleppner, Who Voted?: The Dynamics of
Electoral Turnout, 1870-1980 (New York: Praeger, 1982); Richard L. McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy; and Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of
Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986).
See, Richard L. McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy; Martin Shefter,
"Party, Bureacracy, and Political Change in the United States"; and Martin Shefter, "Regional Receptivity to Reform: The Legacy of the Progressive Era," Political Science Quarterly 198 (1983): 459-483.
Richard L. McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy, 204.
See, Joseph M. Cronin, The Control of Urban Schools: Perspective on the Power of
Educational Reformers (New York: Free Press, 1973); David Tyack, "City
Schools"; and David Tyack, The One Best System.
George A. O. Ernst, "The Movement for School Reform in Boston," Educational
Review 28 (1904): 433-434.
S. A. Wetmore, "Boston School Administration," Educational Review 14 (1897):
112.
Tyack and Hansot, Managers of Virtue.
Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, 217.
Tyack and Hansot, Managers of Virtue, 1 17.
William R. Keylor, "Anti-clericalism and Education Reform in the French Third
Republic: A Retrospective Evaluation," History of Education Quarterly 21 (198 1):
95-103; and John E. Talbott, The Politics of Educational Reform in France, 19181940 (Princeton: Princton University Press, 1969).
Margaret Archer, Social Origins of Educational Systems (Beverly Hills: Sage,
1979); and Henry Levin, "The Dilemma of Comprehensive Secondary School
Reforms in Western Europe," Comparative Education Review 46 (1978): 42-60.
Skowronek, Building a New American State, 287.
See, Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All; and Richard Rubinson, "Class Formation, Politics, and Institutions."
See, George Counts, The Social Composition of Boards of Education: A Study in
the Social Control of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927); and
Scott Nearing, "Who's Who on Our Boards of Education," School and Society 5
(1917): 89-90).
Marvin Lazerson, Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts,
1870-1915 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 158.
Katznelson and Weir, Schoolingfor All, 107.
Thelen, "Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism," 341; 345.
See, Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); Michael Sandel, "The Procedural
Republic and the Unencumbered Self," Political Theory 12 (1984): 81-96; and
Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (New York: Norton,
1972).
Walter Lippman, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest
(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1985 11914]), 25.
661
63. See, Frederic C. Howe, The Confessions of a Reformer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925).
64. See, Hays, The Response to Industrialism; and Richard Hofstadter, The Age of
Reform.
65. Katz, Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools, 115.
66. Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 169. See also, Lucy Salman,
Patronage in the Public Schools (Boston: Women's Auxiliary of the Massachusetts
Civil Service Reform Association, 1908).
67. See, Louis Galambos, "The Emerging Organizational Synthesis"; David Tyack
and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue; Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order;
and Robert Wiebe, The Segmented Society.
68. Robert Luce, "Training for Citizenship," Journal of Education 72 (1910): 598599.
69. See, Lazerson, Origins of the Urban School.
70. Ellwood P. Cubberley, Changing Conceptions of Education (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1909), 15-16.
71. See, Jean B. Quandt, "Religion and Social Thought: The Secularization of Postmillennialism," American Quarterly 25 (1973): 390-409.
72. Henry Suzzallo, "Introduction," in Moral Principles in Education, by John Dewey
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1909), v.
73. Dewey, "The School and Society," 31(0.
74. See, John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Education (New York: Free Press, 1966 119161).
75. Dewey, "The School and Society,"
76. See, Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats
in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); Nancy F.
Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Barbara Epstein, The Politics of
Domesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1981); Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the
Middle C'lass: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981); Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of G(ender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985); and Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,"
American Quarterly 18 (1966).
77. See, Wiebe, The Search for Order.
78. See, William J. Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements during the Progressive Era (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 1986.
79. See, Dewey, Moral Principles in Education; and Walter Lippmann, The Essential
Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, ed. Clinton Rossiter
and James Lare (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
80. Cremin, The Transformation of the School, 122. See also, John Dewey, Democracy and Education.
81. Peter Filene, "An Obituary for 'The Progressive Movement,'" American Quarterly 22 (197()): 20-34.
82. See, Reese, Power and the Promise of School Reform.
83. See, Mary Ryan, Women in Public: From Banners to Ballots (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 1990); Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics; and Martin
Shefter, "Party, Bureaucracy, and Political Change in the United States."
662
84. Rodgers, "In Search of Progressivism," 116.
85. For a study which emphasizes "resources" in this way, see, Wuthnow, Communities of Discourse.
86. Barbara Meil Hobson, Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition (New York: Basic, 1987); C. Howard Hopkins, The Rise of
the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940); and David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue.
87. Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1964 11902]);and Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1967).
88. Emily Fifield, An Appeal to Massachusetts Women (Boston: Massachusetts
School Suffrage Association, 1888); and Lois Bannister Merk, "Boston's Historic
Public School Crisis," New England Quarterly 31 (1958): 172-199.
89. Emily Fifield, An Appeal to Massachusetts Women (Boston: Massachusetts
School Suffrage Association, 1888). (Quoted in Merk, "Boston's Historic Public
School Crisis," 183.)
90. See, National Education Association, Character Education (Washington, D.C.:
Fourth Yearbook of the Department of Superintendence, 1926), 196.
91. See, Yulish, The Search for a Civic Religion.
92. Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, 182.
93. George A. O. Ernst, "The Movement for School Reform in Boston," Educational
Review 28 (1904): 439. There had been "school wars" between the Yankees and
Irish Catholics in Boston in the late 1880s, but these battles had predated the rise
of Progressive education. See also, Lois Bannister Merk, "Boston's Historic
Public School Crisis."
94. Peter Shane, "The Origins of Educational Control: Class, Ethnicity, and School
Reform in Boston, 1875-1920," B. A. Honors Thesis, Harvard University, 1974,
p. 220.
95. Ernst, "The Movement for School Reform in Boston," 439.
96. See, Shane, "The Origins of Educational Control," 238.
97. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925
(New York: Atheneum, 1963).
98. James Storrow, "Shall the Boston Public Schools Be Reorganized?" (Boston,
Mass., 1905), n.p.
99. See, Shane, "The Origins of Educational Control," 241.
100. Boston School Committee, School Documents (Boston: School Committee,
1907), 9-10.
101. Shane, "The Origins of Educational Control," 254.
102. Tyack, The One Best System, 127. See also, George Counts, The Social Composition of Boards of Education; Joseph Cronin, The Control of Urban Schools; and
Cherry Wedgwood Collins, "Schoolmen, Schoolma'ams, and School Boards: The
Struggle for Power in Urban School Systems in the Progressive Era," Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, 1976.
103. See, Meyer, et al., "Public Education as Nation-Building in America."
104. Lazerson, Origins of the Urban School, 9.
105. Boston School Committee, School Documents (Boston: School Committee,
1907): Ella Lyman Cabot, "Moral Instruction and Training in the Public Schools
of Massachusetts," Religious Education 5 (1914): 663-670.
106. See, Glenn, The Myth of the Common School, 160.
663
107. David K. Cohen and Marvin Lazerson, "Education and the Corporate Order," in
Power and Ideology in Education, ed. Jerome Karabel and A. H. Halsey (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 374. See also, David Hogan, Class and
Reform: School and Society in Chicago, 1880-1930 (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1985); and Marvin Lazerson, Origins of the Urban School.
Useful as well are, Michael Apple, Education and Power (Boston: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1982); and Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).
108. Boston School Committee, School Documents (Boston: School Committee,
1908), 48-53. (Quoted in Cohen and Lazerson, "Education and the Corporate
Order," 374.)
109. See, e.g., Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum. A useful general discussion of
the "new middle class" appears in Barbara Ehrenreich, "The Professional-Managerial Class," in Between Labor and Capital, ed. Pat Walker (Boston: South End
Press, 1979), 5-45.
110. For an illuminating discussion of standardized testing, including "character testing," during this period, see, Yulish, The Search for a Civic Religion, chs. 4-5.
111. See, Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist Society; Robert A. Carlson, The
Quest for Conformity: Americanization through Education (New York: Carlson
Wiley, 1971); Raymond Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962); and Hogan, Class and Reform. Also valuable
is Marvin Lazerson and W. Norton Grubb, editors, American Education and
Vocationalism: A Documentary History (New York: Teachers College Press,
1974).
112. Ella Lyman Cabot, "Moral Instruction and Training in the Public Schools of Massachusetts," Religious Education 5 (1911): 665.
1 13. Massachusetts State Board of Education. 1931. Report on Character Education in
the Secondary Schools, Bulletin No. 16 (Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Department of Education, 1931), 48-50.
114. T. J. Golightly, The Present Status of the Teaching of Morals in the Public High
Schools (George Peabody College, 1926), 79-87; National Education Association, Character Education, 1926; and National Education Association, Character
Education, Tenth Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Department of Superintendence,
1932).
115. See, Henry Lester Smith, Robert Stewart McElhinney, and George Renwick
Steele, Character Education Through Religious and Moral Education in the Public
Schools of the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Bureau of Cooperative Research, 1926).
116. See, Kaestle, "Moral Education and Common Schools in America."
117. See, Cuban, How Teachers Taught, chs. 2-3; and Arthur Zilversmit, "The Failure
of Progressive Education, 1920-1940," in Schooling and Society, ed. Lawrence
Stone (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976), 252-261.
118. Martin Dworkin, editor, Dewey on Education(New York: Teachers College Press,
1959), 129-130. (Quoted in Cuban, How Teachers Taught, 113.)
119. See, Cuban, How Teachers Taught;and Stephen J. Clarke, "Two Schools and Two
Ideas: A Study of Progressivism and Character Education in the Public Schools of
the City of Boston, Massachusetts, and the Parochial Schools of the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, 1920-1940." Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, 1965.
120. See, Cuban, How Teachers Taught, 9-10.
664
121. See, Golightly, The Present Status of the Teaching of Morals in the Public High
Schools; National Education Association, Character Education, Fourth Yearbook, 1926; National Education Association, Character Education, Tenth Yearbook, 1932; and Stephen M. Yulish, The Search for a Civic Religion.
122. Boston School Committee, Course in Citizenship Through Character Development: School Document No. 10 (Boston: School Committee, 1924), 14.
123. See, Character Education Institution, Character Education Methods: The Iowa
Plan (Chevy Chase: Character Education Institution, 1922); Frances Fitzgerald,
America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Random House, 1979): William Hutchins, Children's Code of Morals for Elementary Schools (Washington, D.C.: National Capital Press, 1917); and Stephen M.
Yulish, The Search for a Civic Religion.
124. Kenneth L. Heaton, The Character Emphasis in Education (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1933), 59.
125. See, Swidler, "The Uses of Culture in Historical Explanation."