Shifting Tides: The Expansion of the Citizenship Curriculum During the Progressive Era

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18.
  In Roundtable Session: Citizenship and Social Norms in the Progressive Era

Abstract

The collision of industrial efficiency with increased layers of ethnic, racial, and religious pluralism during the Progressive Era produced an extended conversation regarding the relationship between citizenship and the shifting American identity. Public education became a primary target of social reform as educators and scholars developed theories in which the classroom was the place to assimilate and socialize children into the new American reality. Consequently, the purpose of schools changed dramatically in the 1890s and the early decades of the twentieth century. Secondary schools no longer served as college preparatory institutes as they had in the nineteenth century. By the publication of the 1916 report, the purpose of schools increasingly came to be understood as preparing students for life as productive contributors and citizens in a community. This required that all students understand their formal and informal obligations as citizens.

In a broader context this period also represents a shift towards educating students for more deliberative and participatory democratic citizenship. These concepts draw heavily from John Dewey and his focus on deliberative democracy as an application of social learning. The changes in the approach to teaching citizenship from 1894 to 1916 can be understood as an attempt on the part of educators to adapt the role of schools and the curriculum to the needs of an industrialized democracy with an evolving understanding of citizenship.

This paper examines changing conceptions of citizenship education from the1890s through the first two decades of the twentieth in terms of its relationship to the role of schools in society. Included is a consideration of the theoretical and historical trends that influenced the citizenship curriculum. Of particular interest is the shift towards social citizenship and its application towards immigrant populations through both pedagogical progressive approaches like community civics, and administrative progressive approaches like Americanization. The term social citizenship is applied in comparison to what could be considered political citizenship that focuses on political engagement, rights, and governmental structures.

In examining these ideas the works of Progressive Era education scholars relating to citizenship and the civic education are examined. Specifically the John Dewey’s Moral Principles in Education, and his articles “The School as Social Center,” and “Ethical Principles Underlying Education” receive particular attention, as do the writings of J. Lynn Barnard, Nicholas Murray Butler, and Ellwood Cubberley.Also, the proceedings of the National Education Association annual meetings from the period serve as a central venue for debating the theories and methods of teaching citizenship in schools. The practical applications of these theoretical ideas are examined through the textbooks of Arthur Dunn and others publishing classroom materials promoting similar themes.

Studies on citizenship education during progressive era have been offered as peripheral examinations of other topics like the development of the social studies curriculum. Directly studying citizenship education is important, however, because it offers the opportunity to study the evolution of civic identities of ethnic groups and immigrant populations in relationship to the American identity in an industrialized democracy.

Author

• Jeremy Kelton Williams, Texas A&M University