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Title: Did Democracy Give the U.S. an Edge in Primary Schooling?

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2014

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Abstract: Is expanding the electorate an important part of inducing a population to accept mass education? It has been argued that a decentralized and democratic United States polity produced more primary schooling circa 1850 than Britains more centralized and less egalitarian electoral system. Re-analyzing census data, Parliamentary reports, and election results, I find the perceived American advantage in regard to enrollments is due to an underestimation of the population at risk, a conflation of enrollments with attendance, and differences in the length of school terms. In neither northern or southern counties in the U.S. did the extension of the franchise correlate with more tax dollars for elementary schools; rather it materialized in counties with more Whig and moral reform partisans motivated by the same type of external benefits/ social control objectives as those attributed to British bureaucrats. Greater similarities in educational status may have existed in this early stage of mass schooling than is often acknowledged. In both places, tepid interest in greater amounts of schooling is correlated with high levels of agricultural employment and cultural/racial diversity, although the spread of a high fertility population into low density areas presented the United States with a special challenge. These results suggest that the effects of late nineteenth-century compulsory attendance and other schooling legislation merit a re-evaluation.

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Authors: Shammas, Carole

Conference Name: All-UC Group

Publisher Location: Berkeley, CA

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education

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