As citizens of the United States and immigrants migrated westward in the first half of the nineteenth century, they brought to new communities and states educational experiments and plans that had first taken shape in Europe and the Eastern states. While some individuals feared what they believed was an untamed land, many Americans who were influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment were convinced that the West would be civilized through the diffusion of knowledge. Others dared to hope for the regeneration of human nature in what they viewed as the blank slate of the West. In the early American republic the transmission of culture and work procedures still took place largely in home or workplace settings, outside of formal schools and colleges. The primary institution for educating children was the family. In the decades after the American Revolution, however, cultural leaders argued that schooling was essential in order.....
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