The Rise of the South in American Thought and Education

The Rise of the South in American Thought and Education: The Rockefeller Years (1902-1917), and Beyond documents the riseboth real and imaginaryof the South in American thought and education at the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

The Rise of the South in American Thought and Education documents the generalization of southern values and institutions northward at the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. The traditional emphasis in the South on vocational education (a reflection of the Christian ethic of work as redemption, not the Republican one of free labor), country life and living, racial segregation, and the centrality of nature study as a source of both science and religion, added up to a coherent vision that responded to "undesirable" economic and social change in the urban North. The survival of Southern cultural traditions, as antiquated as they were, posed no threat to the plans of corporate progressives; indeed, as the book argues, it facilitated them, and nowhere more so than in the field of education. Modern educators wanting to put into historical context relations of class, race, and ethnicity as they persist in today's schools will find much here to inform them, putting to rest, for example, false distinctions in the history of school reform between a liberal-progressive North and a conservative and reactionary South. The book will appeal as well as to a popular audience of Americans curious to understand the illiberal foundations of the modern liberal state.

Autorentext

John M. Heffron, Ph.D. is Professor of Educational History and Culture and Director of the MA Program in Educational Leadership and Societal Change at Soka University of America. He completed his doctorate in American history at the University of Rochester.

Klappentext

The Rise of the South in American Thought and Education documents the generalization of southern values and institutions northward at the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. The traditional emphasis in the South on vocational education (a reflection of the Christian ethic of work as redemption, not the Republican one of free labor), country life and living, racial segregation, and the centrality of nature study as a source of both science and religion, added up to a coherent vision that responded to "undesirable" economic and social change in the urban North. The survival of Southern cultural traditions, as antiquated as they were, posed no threat to the plans of corporate progressives; indeed, as the book argues, it facilitated them, and nowhere more so than in the field of education. Modern educators wanting to put into historical context relations of class, race, and ethnicity as they persist in today s schools will find much here to inform them, putting to rest, for example, false distinctions in the history of school reform between a liberal-progressive North and a conservative and reactionary South. The book will appeal as well as to a popular audience of Americans curious to understand the illiberal foundations of the modern liberal state.

Inhalt

Jackie M. Blount: Preface Acknowledgments Introduction "Old times there are not forgotten": A Didactic New South in the Development Plans of the North, 18801903 Moral and Practical Uplift in the New Agricultural Education: Nation-Building for a Solid South, 19001920 "To Form a More Perfect Union": The Moral Example of Southern Baptist Thought and Education, 18901920 Otis W. Caldwell, Part I: Nature Study, Ecumenicalism, and the Rise of General Science Otis W. Caldwell, Part II: The Mission of Science in General Education Race Education for All: "The Hampton-Tuskegee Idea" and Its Americanization The New Machinery of Social Discipline: Educating for an Immigrant Nation, the Case of the Gary Schools The Lincoln School of Teachers College: Elitism and Educational Democracy Epilogue: The Global (American) South: The Past as Prologue? Index.