Early American education reformers aimed to pacify the poor rather than end poverty
Evidence
Mann and his followers appeared to be at least as interested in disarming the poor as in preventing poverty. They saw in the spread of universal and free education a means of alleviating social distress without redistributing wealth and power or altering the broad outlines of the economic system. Education, it seems, had almost magical powers. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 371
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Uncompromising reformers harm the poor by preventing partial reforms — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 572; Early education reformers aimed to defuse class conflict without redistributing wealth; Early 20th-century educators explicitly saw schools as training children to accept inequality — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 938 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Early education reformers aimed to defuse class conflict without redistributing wealth
#corroborates(0.95) - US schooling founders aimed at social control amid capitalist inequality, not equality
#corroborates(0.90) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 363 - Education’s centrality in American reform reflects accommodation to capitalism, not ideology
#corroborates(0.85) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 283 - Public schooling in America was founded to produce a properly subordinate adult population
#corroborates(0.85) - Early 20th-century educators explicitly saw schools as training children to accept inequality
#exemplifies(0.80) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 938 - Profit imperatives, not human capacities, shape American schooling
#expands(0.80) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 1158 - US educational reform responded to the social unrest of new wage laborers
#expands(0.75) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 617 - Corporate capitalism’s rise shaped the Progressive Movement in American schooling
#expands(0.75) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 654