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…

Patricia Graham's recent defense of public education in the United States shows that public education has been responsive to society's demands and supports the earlier observation of Charles Burgess and Merle Borrowman that the dominant educational ideology is a function of the nation's need for human resources. When the nation has clear and…