Literacy, common schools, and high schools in colonial and antebellum America

Abstract

The study of colonial and antebellum American education received a major impetus almost five decades ago when Bernard Bailyn and Lawrence Cremin challenged scholars to critically re-examine education and schooling in the past (especially employing a broader definition of education than had been used by most previous authors).1 Since the mid-1960s scholars have made major contributions to our understanding of the role of parents, churches, and schools in educating early Americans. Yet there has been relatively little overlap between the historians who investigate education before and after 1800. In addition, the education issues addressed by colonial historians differ from those pursued by antebellum analysts-partly reflecting societal variations in the past as well as the particular concerns of the current scholars studying those two timeperiods.