Public Education as Nation-Building in America: Enrollments and Bureaucratization in the American States, 1870-1930

View/ Open
Issue Date
1979-11Author
Meyer, John W.
Tyack, David
Nagel, Joane
Gordon, Audri
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Current discussions of the effects of urbanization and industrialization on the bureaucratization of American public education in the later 19th century do not offer effective explanations of the expansion of the educational system in the first place. Enrollments were high much earlier than these explanations suggest and were probably higher in rural than in urban settings. We argue that the spread of public education, especially in the North and West, took place through a series of nation-building social movements having partly religious and partly political forms. We see these movements as reflecting the involvement and success of American society in the world exchange economy and the dominance of parallel religious ideologies. State-level data are used to show both the absence of positive effects of urban industrialism on enrollments and some suggestive effects of evangelical Protestantism and 19th-century Republicanism.
Description
This is the published version. Copyright 1979 University of Chicago Press.
Collections
Citation
Meyer, John W., David Tyack, Joane Nagel, and Audri Gordon. "Public Education as Nation-Building in America: Enrollments and Bureaucratization in the American States, 1870-1930." American Journal of Sociology Am J Sociol 85.3 (1979): 591. Web.
Items in KU ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
We want to hear from you! Please share your stories about how Open Access to this item benefits YOU.