During the mid-nineteenth century, Americans created the functional equivalent of earlier state religious establishments. Supported by mandatory taxation, purportedly inclusive, and vested with messianic promise, public schooling, like the earlier established churches, was touted as a bulwark of the Republic and as an essential agent of moral and civic virtue. As was the case with dissenters from early American established churches, some citizens and religious minorities have dissented from the public school system, what historian Sidney Mead calls the country's «established church.» They have objected to the «orthodoxy» of the public school, compulsory taxation, and attempts to abolish their schools or bring them into conformity with the state school paradigm. The Dissenting Tradition in American Education recounts episodes of Catholic and Protestant nonconformity since the inception of public education, including the creation of Catholic and Protestant schools, homeschooling, conflicts regarding regulation of nonconforming schools, and controversy about the propositions of knowledge and dispositions of belief and value sanctioned by the state school. Such dissent suggests that Americans consider disestablishing the public school and ponder means of education more suited to their confessional pluralism and commitments to freedom of conscience, parental liberty, and educational justice.

Auteur

The Authors: James C. Carper is Professor of Social Foundations of Education in the Department of Educational Studies at The University of South Carolina where he has been a faculty member since 1989. His research interests include the history of education in the United States, education and religion, and private schools. In addition to co-editing several books on religion and education, he has published essays in numerous journals. He is the past president of Associates for Research in Private Education.
Thomas C. Hunt is Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at The University of Dayton where he specializes in the history of education, particularly that of Catholic schools. Hunt has authored or edited fourteen books mainly on religion and education. The recipient of the 2002 Alumni Award for Scholarship from the University of Dayton, he has served as co-editor of Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice since the fall of 1998.