Graff: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Our Times

Opening up, our readers learn that our very own U.S. was often said to have been born modern, largely because of its strong foundation in literacy. For a long time, this surge of nationhood had overpowering moral and civic goals, over that of true education. However, it was agreed upon by both Radicals and Conservatives that education was necessary in order to improve a society. There was then a shift in the early 19th century that exposed a common core of morality, patriotism, and knowledge into an individuals schooling. Despite the fact that both radicals and conservative agreed that and educated society was vital, Conservative were strong opposed to the education of slaves. As the schooling system began to expand, the use of schools was still mainly used for the assimilation and sociocultural cohesion, and this developed into a major social goal in the early nineteenth century. Education was promoted with the idea of the advancement of a society, not the individual. However, education was more readily available to those who had an advantage in occupation or property. There were economic-friendly schools where man met, for cheap or almost free of charge, but this type of education was given on shaky grounds because there was a constant struggle to find teachers, and many of those teachers were under qualified. With education, reading began to increase but the reading material that was actually being read was criticized to have been on material that was not approved. Women, especially middle-class women read often and were actually encouraged to do so. However, slave-owners opposed the idea of allowing slaves to read, because they thought the world of books would cause the slaves to hate their condition, begin to create crazy ideas in their head, and they believed that books would ultimately make them, “unlaborable”.