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Richard Angelo 144C Taylor
Policy Studies
EPE 653
History of Higher Education
Fall, 2004
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every
circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature,
but every end is a beginning; that there is always another
dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep
opens.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Circles” (1840)
A way of seeing is always a way of not seeing.
—Kenneth Burke
Permanence & Change (1935)
It is not history one is faced with, nor biography, but a
confusion of histories, a swarm of biographies. There is order
in it all of some sort, but it is the order of a squall or a street
market: nothing metrical.
—Clifford Geertz
After the Fact (1995)
Required Books:
Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (University of Georgia Press ed., 1990).
Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (University of Chicago, 1965).
Louise L. Stevenson, The Victorian Homefront: American Thought & Culture, 1860-1880 (Cornell University Press edition, 2001)
Plus one of the following (your choice):
Elizabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African-American Literary Societies (Duke University Press, 2002).
Thomas Augst, The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and the Moral Life in Nineteenth Century America (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Articles: (Some are required, others are supplemental. All are available on e-reserve.)
(1) Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (University of North Carolina Press, 1960), “An Interpretation,” pp. 3-49.
(2) Lawrence A. Cremin, Traditions of American Education (Basic Books, 1977), Preface, Chapter 1, “The Colonial Experience: 1607-1783; Chapter 2, “The National Experience, 1783-1876,” pp. 1-87.
(3) James McLachlan, “The American College in the Nineteenth Century: Toward a Reappraisal,” Teachers College Record, 80, 2 (December, 1978): 288-306.
(4) Laurence Veysey, “The History of Education,” Reviews in American History, 10, 4 (December 1982): 281-291.
(5) Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (Knopf, 1992), Introduction, xi-xix, Chapter 8, “The Comforts of Home,” Chapter 9, “Literature & Life,” pp.238-312, plus endnotes, pp. 469-476.
(6) Thomas Bender, Intellect & Public Life: Essays on the Social History of Academic Intellectuals in the US (Hopkins, 1993), Chapter 3, “The Erosion of Public Culture: Cities, Discourses and Professional Disciplines,” pp.30-46, plus endnotes, pp. 155-159.
(7) Richard H. Brodhead, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading & Writing in 19th Century America (Chicago, 1993), Introduction, “On the Idea of Cultures of Letters, pp.1-11; Chapter 1, “Sparing the Rod: Discipline & Fiction in Antebellum America,” pp. 13-47, plus endnotes, pp. 211-217.
(8) Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (Oxford, 1994), Chapter 6, “A Republic of Women, 1829-1832,” Chapter 7, “The West, & Chapter 8, “Parlor Literature,” pp.58-88, plus endnotes, pp. 411-417.
(9) Joseph Kett, The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990 (Stanford, 1994) Chapter 5, “The Homely Renaissance, 1870-1900,” Chapter 6, “The Decline of Culture, 1890-1900,” pp.142-222, plus endnotes, pp. 487-509.
(10) Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “Nous Autres”: Reading, Passion, and the Creation of M. Carey Thomas, The Journal of American History, 79,1 (June, 1992): 68-95.
(11) Barbara Sicherman, “Reading and Ambition: M. Carey Thomas and Female Heroism,” American Quarterly, 45, 1 ( March, 1993): 73-103.
An Overview of the Course:
We start with Rudolph and Veysey. Why? Because their conflicting but equally comprehensive interpretations are fundamental to the historiography. In other words, more recent work—my colleague John Thelin’s History of American Higher Education (Johns Hopkins, 2004), for example—is best appreciated against the backdrop of The American College and The Emergence. These are the books which inaugurated lines of argument and counter-argument which are still going strong some 40 years later, arguments which in one way or another take changes in the character of colleges and universities—“education beyond the level of the high school or its equivalent,” as Rudolph puts it—to be definitive of the history of higher education.
Stevenson, McHenry and Augst, on the other hand, suggest an alternative way of proceeding. In effect, they “change the subject.” Although educational activities beyond the rudiments are still center-stage—“higher education” understood as reading, writing, learning, self-development, the making of career and the sources of social mobility—the college classroom along with transformations in campus life now fade into the background. At its most expansive, the city itself frames the scene of instruction; at its most intimate, the parlors of the middle class household. Sometimes its an intermediary realm of voluntary associations that matter most—the lyceum, literary societies, and reading clubs.
The articles will be useful to us in at least two ways. Some contribute directly to our understanding of the standard account and its trajectory (McLachlan, Veysey, and Horowitz.) Others make common cause with the likes of Stevenson (Bender, Brodhead, Bushman, Hedrick, and Kett). I suppose there is also an implicit irony of sorts here, one internal to the development of the standard account as well as the alternative. The history of education as a contemporary field of study begins in late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s by self-consciously rejecting a school-centered perspective, by embracing culture and its educational effects as a way of avoiding anachronism. (This is where Bernard Bailyn’s, “Education in the Forming of American Society,” as well as the chapters from Lawrence Cremin’s Traditions of American Education come in.) It’s clear in retrospect, however, that those initial hopes for a broad-gauged cultural perspective fell by the wayside, at least insofar as the history of education itself is concerned. Hence most all of the new departures I’ve pointed to here issue from scholars whose disciplinary allegiances lie elsewhere, with literary studies, with social or intellectual history writ large, or “the history of the book.”
Requirements:
In addition to the required reading and weekly discussions, you have a choice: (a) write 4 short papers, one on each the assigned books; (b) write a longer paper on two or possibly three additional books, showing how they complicate, correct, or extend the interpretive interests in Rudolph or Veysey; (c) conduct a small-scale archival investigation of your own on some aspect of the history of (higher) education in Kentucky. We’ll discuss these options and the point of these options in more detail as we go along, but no matter what path you chose, the goal is the same—namely, introducing you to the pleasures and the challenges of thinking seriously about the history of education. Yes, attendance counts. I’ll be here each week. You should do the same. There will be no final exam. Your grade will reflect my appraisal of your written work as well as your participation in class. Enjoy!
A Bare-Bones Schedule:
August 25: First Class
September 2: Bailyn, “An Interpretation,” Education in the Forming of American Society (e-reserve) plus Rudolph. Start with the bibliographical essay, and then read chapters 1 through 5, “Colonial College” through “Collegiate Way” pp. 3-109.
September 8: Rudolph, “Reform & Reaction” through “The Crisis of the 1850’s,” pp. 110-240.
September 16: Rudolph, “Dawning of a New Era” through “ The Rise of Football,” pp. 241-393.
September 22: Rudolph, “Academic Man through “The American Consensus” and the Epilogue, pp. 394-496.
September 29: Veysey, The Emergence of the American University, “Introduction” through “Utility,” pp. 1-120. (Highlight significant points of departure from Rudolph: reconsider especially “The American Consensus” and “Academic Man.”)
October 6: Veysey, “Research” through “Season of Reassessment,” pp. 121-259.
October 13: Veysey, “Pattern of the New University” through “The Tendency to Blend & to Reconcile,” pp. 263-380.
October 20: McLachlan, “The American College in the 19th Century: Toward a Reappraisal,” Veysey, “The History of Education,” Thomas Bender, “The Erosion of Public Culture,” and Cremin, the first two chapters from Traditions of American Education. (All on e-reserve).
October 27: Stevenson, “Around the Parlor Table” through “Preparing for Parlor Life,” pp. 1-100.
November 3: Stevenson, “Leaders for Parlor and Public Life” through “Centennial Milestones,” pp. 101-199.
November 10: Kett, Hedrick, Brodhead, Bushman, Horowitz or Sicherman as you wish (Supplemental). But also make a start on Augst or McHenry.
November 17: Augst and McHenry.
November 24: Thanksgiving. No class.
December 1: Augst and McHenry.
December 8: Last class.