This book is not a comprehensive history of moral education in American schools. Rather, it is an episodic history that deals with selected periods, movements, and individuals throughout the course of American education history from the time of colonial Massachusetts in the 17th century up to present times. It is almost entirely devoted to public schools. It is a tale that is fraught with friction and controversy, even legal challenge. Given the nature of the topic, and the passion with which it has been and is currently viewed, it will ever be thus.
Preface.Chapter 1. Colonial Beginnings.Chapter 2. The Revolutionary Era.Chapter 3. The Education of Poor Children: New York City and the Lancaster Method.Chapter 4. Horace Mann's Common School.Chapter 5. The Antebellum State Normal School.Chapter 6. Ante- and Postbellum Schooling in the South: Virginia—A Case Study.Chapter 7. The Nineteenth Century Parochial School.Chapter 8. The Bible as a Textbook of Moral Education.Chapter 9. McGuffey Readers.Chapter 10. The “Americanizing” Secular School.Chapter 11. A Special Case—The Freedmen.Chapter 12. The Early Twentieth Century—The “Citizenship” Focus.Chapter 13. The Impact of John Dewey on Moral Education.Chapter 14. The Educational Policies Commission.Chapter 15. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development.Chapter 16. Values Clarification.Chapter 17. The Character Education Movement.