Description:
Examining the early debates in the United States over how best to educate the constituents of the new nation
When the founding fathers of the United States inaugurated a system of government that was unprecedented in the modern world, they knew that a functioning democracy required an educated electorate capable of making rational decisions. But who would validate the information that influenced citizens' opinions? By spotlighting various institutions of learning, George Oberle provides a comprehensive look at how knowledge was created, circulated, and consumed in the early American republic.
Many of the founders, including George Washington, initially favored the creation of a centralized national university to educate Americans from all backgrounds. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, however, politicians moved away from any notion of publicly educated laypeople generating useful knowledge. The federal government ultimately founded the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, to be run by experts only. Oberle's insightful analysis of the competing ideas over the nature of education offers food for thought as we continue to grapple with a rapidly evolving media landscape amid contested meanings of knowledge, expertise, and the obligations of citizenship.
Review Quotes: In uncovering this broad, interconnected, contested, and adaptive network of institutions and individuals, Oberle has offered a compelling new story as to how early Americans tried to create an informed citizenry. His narrative will offer fruitful pathways for further exploration. Yet the book is also timely. Surely contemporary readers can find some commonality with those who are trying desperately throughout the book to inform rambunctious citizens amid an era of 'information revolution' (3). Whether we are broadening historical narratives to include more diverse stories, expanding initiatives related to civic education, or reviving appreciation of the classics, Americans today seem as fixated as their predecessors in the early republic on -and unavoidably at odds about - what it means to be an informed citizen. Perhaps Oberle's book therefore offers a reminder to those who try to control either knowledge or democracy that they have both have proven to be critical yet fickle forces in the history of the United States.--Pedagogic Historica