Making Schools American: Nationalism and the Origin of Modern Educational Politics

How school reformers in the Progressive Era—who envisioned the public school as the quintessential American institution—laid the groundwork for contemporary battles over the structure and curriculum of public schools.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, a generation of school reformers began touting public education's unique capacity to unite a diverse and diffuse citizenry while curing a broad swath of social and political ills. They claimed that investing in education would equalize ...