Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America by Johann N. Neem (review)

A short preface opens Democracy's Schools and sets the stage for the rich history that unfolds. This book provides readers with a clear impression of the origins and function of public schools in the early American republic. Johann N. Neem argues that public education and American democracy went hand in hand, as issues of localism, curriculum, politics, and diversity loomed large. The Founding Fathers even asserted that a flourishing democracy demanded an educated citizenry. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, believed that neighborliness defined good citizenship and thus white children and youth needed to be taught that value along with basic skills and knowledge in order to fortify the republic. Good citizenship would, of course, beget good humans. Neem thus traces how schools became spaces to "develop effective citizens and to encourage self-culture" (93).

This book is divided into five thematic chapters proceeding chronologically from the Revolutionary era to the Civil War. This structure enables Neem to provide a panoramic overview of the substantive moments in the history of American education, from Horace Mann's travels by horseback in the 1830s to visit and evaluate Massachusetts schools to the 1860s Cincinnati Bible War when the Cincinnati Board of Education eliminated the practice of Bible-reading in public schools. Neem unifies these educational moments by focusing on two key concepts: citizenship and self-culture. Early educational reformers like theologian William Ellery Channing asserted that "education must enable each person to engage in self-making [self-culture]," which he defined as forming oneself in the likeness of God (13). Thousands of Americans embraced this attitude, as they joined voluntary associations, became members of literary societies, and began to endorse tax-supported public schools.

A major strength of this book is its emphasis on localism—that is, public schools supported by "local taxes," supervised by "locally elected officials," and connected to the needs of "local communities" (2). Though localism oftentimes gets subordinated in the historiography on American education, it has been a defining feature of American public schools. Sometimes localism has been used as a strategy to persuade Americans to support the creation of schools, in others as a principle guiding how and where schools should be built and who could matriculate. For example, in North Carolina, the political resurgence of the Whig Party in the 1830s led to the appropriation of federal and state funds toward the construction and maintenance of schoolhouses across that state. In a matter of sixteen years, student enrollment increased by over 550 percent. An emphasis on localism did not head off conflict, however. In fact, Neem seems to suggest that educational debates around issues such as the centralization of authority, state funding, and even immigration continued to circulate. Then, just as now, Americans promoted local control of public schools (86).

Neem adopts a wide definition of education to consider not only schools but also teacher and student experiences. The fourth chapter of the book, entitled "Teachers and Students," offers an interesting discussion of the origins of democratic pedagogy in the nineteenth century. Electa Lincoln, the first white American woman to serve as principal of a state normal school, emerges as an educational reformer who sought to train teachers to treat students with respect and patience, instead of using force, threats, and violence. Generally, normal schools aimed to impart to future teachers subject-specific knowledge, expertise in teaching pedagogy, and moral character. But most teachers were not trained at normal schools and often relied on traditional teaching strategies such as severe discipline to maintain order and facilitate memorization of basic subject material. Besides, even normal-school trained teachers reverted back to traditional methods, like using the rod, despite the new democratic pedagogy espoused by educational reformers. The American classroom thus remained a traditional space, a fact of which students were acutely aware. Students too often reported that school was altogether uninteresting and unexciting.

The archival record seemingly privileges...