The purpose of this article has been to set the record straight as to the extent to which education of the mind and hands was prevalent in the United States prior to the 1880s. This effort is necessary since the proponents of the manual training curriculum that surfaced in the United States in the 1880s created a misperception that no prior form…

Historians of American education readily acknowledge that in the mid-19th century the German university and academic ideal rose in prominence among American academicians, who then worked diligently to replicate the German university model in the United States. During this same time, however, many more Americans were exposed to a different…