The Birth of Report Cards: Capitalism, Protestantism, and Disciplinary Power

• In Event: Politics, Ideology, and the Creation of School Systems in the 19th Century

Abstract

This paper examines the life and career of a classroom teacher from the 1830s in western New York. The teacher’s early use of report cards – or the sending home of periodic, written evaluation of student conduct and/or academic performance – becomes a microcosm for broader economic, religious, and political ideologies of the antebellum period. Michel Foucault’s ideas about “disciplinary power” add context to these ideologies and help us understand the origins of what is now a ubiquitous tool of educators: the report card.

Author

• Wade Morris, Georgia State University