Paul Theobald, 1-10
- What is the legacy of country schools in American educational history? Theobald makes a careful study of thorny issues affecting these schools: local versus state control of the schools, an increase in women’s power in school matters, battles over the location of schools, and the move for publicly-provided textbooks. He views these conflicts as partial victories demonstrating a slow but inexorable progression toward democracy. This struggle is the legacy of the country schools.
"Responses to "America's Country School Legacy"
- Theobald's article is followed by reflections on his essay by three leading historians of education. These scholars─affiliated with universities in the U.S., Sweden, and Australia─analyze Theobald’s paper from divergent viewpoints, drawing from different knowledge traditions, ideologies, locations, and values. They illuminate various aspects of Theobald’s study and raise new lines of inquiry. The purpose for this dialogical arrangement is to further stimulate readers’ thinking about the legacy of the country schools and about educational trends in both the U.S. and abroad.
No. 1 Gerald L. Gutek, 10-12
- Gerald Gutek commends Paul Theobald for avoiding the nostalgia that often clouds memories of country schools. He focuses on Theobald’s examination of issues affecting these schools. Like Theobald, he raises questions. For example, he asks whether farmers’ preference for local control was based on their belief that they should decide on issues facing them where they lived and labored, or was their proclivity based on a larger ideology? He concludes by asserting that more country school research like that of Theobald may result in a greater understanding of the role of country schools in American educational history.
No. 2 David Hamilton, 13-15
- David Hamilton limits his response to an analysis of Paul Theobald’s terminology and to further reflections on Theobald’s quest for the “deeper significance” of the country school experience. He defines relevant terms that are pregnant with historical meaning, e.g., “public,” “free,” and “common.” Using these terms, he asserts that for centuries public schooling was viewed as necessary preparation for involvement in the public sphere. In sixteenth-century England, for example, this privilege was granted to a tiny group of male elites: members of the nobility, landowners, and senior officials of the church. Gradually, other groups—including women—demanded access to the public sphere. This struggle, which has lasted for centuries, should not be ignored when seeking to understand the legacy of America’s country schools.
No. 3 Michael Corbett, 16-22
- Michael Corbett views Theobald’s research project as an examination of the development and legacy of country schooling beginning in what is called the Common School Era. Theobald’s argument follows some of the tensions that developed in the transition from schools that were less standardized and more locally controlled to what are now modern, bureaucratic institutions. Like Theobald, Corbett asserts that the tensions, debates, and politics represented by this historical development remain relevant today. He suggests a geographic dimension to his analysis, arguing that as North America urbanized, those places outside the metropolitan core became marginal to the central current of social and economic development. Theobald and Corbett argue, in different ways, that the schools were caught up in this marginalization and became institutions that were evaluated in terms of their connections or disconnections to hegemonic urban space.
Contributor Biographies, 23-24
- Key words: common school, commonwealth, country school history, critical theory, Daniel Tanner, democracy, domestic education, educational history, elections, elite, farmer, free school, high school, ideology, John Dewey, legacy, local control, Martin Luther King, Jr., nineteenth century, normal school, one-room school, private school, public school, public sphere, school board, small country school, social justice, state control, subscription school, teacher, tenant farmer, textbooks, women