What was the purpose of the American high school, and why was it able to supplant private academies as the dominant form of secondary education in the US by the end of the 19th century? In the large towns of the colonial period, grammar schools like the Boston Latin Grammar School offered a classical curriculum. It was heavily steeped in Latin and Greek, which prepared young men of the propertied elite for Harvard and other colonial colleges. In 1821, the city of Boston opened America's first public high school, the Boston English Classical School, which was open to boys at least 12 years of age. These youths engaged a modern curriculum that included advanced studies in English, literature, science, mathematics, and ancient history, subjects deemed fit preparation for future merchants and businessmen. Philadelphia followed suit with Boston by opening the all-male, degree-granting Central High School in 1838, offering a modern curriculum that appealed mainly to the city's proprietary middle class, which was anxious to maintain its status in the increasingly competitive market economy. A degree from Central was a high-status, marketable credential. >> You will recall that activist members of the Whig Party in the 1830s lead the national campaign for common elementary schools. Similarly, these Whigs waxed enthusiastically about the potential of high schools to bring together members of different social classes where all would presumably rise or fall on their own merit. Here young people would learn the Republican virtues of civic responsibility, hard work, and punctuality. And they would learn Protestant morality. Whigs describe the high school as, quote, a republican crown. After the 1830s, coeducational high schools emerged in the cities of the Northeast and Midwest, where their non-classical curricula offered a viable public alternative to private academies. Regional wealth and civic pride grew in tandem. And by the 1850s, cities were investing heavily in high schools as architectural symbols to match their prosperity. These ornate structures conveyed a high regard for academic learning. Within these buildings, young people engaged a curriculum that most often included chemistry, algebra, English, history, geography, and a foreign language, often with Latin on the lists. These subjects were deemed to strengthen the various faculties of the brain, memory, will, reasoning, imagination, and so forth, and to convey practical advantages as well. For example, the study of French, Spanish, or German was assumed to strengthen the memory faculty at the same time it provided a potentially useful entree into commercials zones where the language was spoken. In the 1880s, after considerable expansion, the high schools of the Northeast surpassed the private academies in enrollments, with a few notably elite exceptions. The Phillips Academies at Andover and Exeter, the Deerfield Academy and St. Paul's come immediately to mind. The heyday of the American academy was over. The institution was out-competed by the high school. By no means is this to say that anything like a majority of young people attended a high school in the eight, 19th century. Far from it. In 1890, for example, only between 6 and 7% of the population age 14 to 17 were high school students. >> In the 19th century, high schools built as commodious, freestanding structures appeared in cities or larger towns. They were precursors to the cathedrals of culture that arose in large numbers of cities between 1900 and World War II. Boosterich said he's created these symbols of high culture for their children. Yes, but also as lures for investors. >> Mm. >> In rural America, the typical high school shared a town building with an elementary school or an elementary and grammar school, occupying the top floor. The two or three-tiered institution constituted a union school. Union high schools were common in the small towns of rural America until they succumbed to rural school consolidation, a long standing movement that started in the Progressive Era and continued into the 1950s. We leave this episode with several interesting points regarding coeducation in 19th century American high schools. Our information is from David Hyack, Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot's splendid book Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools. They make several key points. First, public secondary education was overwhelmingly coeducational. Second, with few exceptions, girls and boys studied the same subjects. The curriculum was not significantly differentiated by gender. Third, girls at least equaled and often outperformed boys in their academic studies. Fourth, girls substantially outnumbered boys as both students and graduates of high schools, accounting for 57% of the students and 65% of the graduates in 1890. This ends our module on the Postbellum era. Next, we turn to the Progressive Era, an era that was determinative of the course of US public schooling in the 20th century. [MUSIC] [SOUND]
