Merle Curti Intellectual History

Assignment - Educational historian Merle Curti has written that the history of American education is a story about the quest for power, a struggle for cultural, economic, and political freedom and equality. In a well-written, typed paper, explain what Curti means and also explain at least three historical examples that embody this meaning. Be explicit and detailed.

Merle Curti was not only an educational historian, but also a pioneer in the development of the field of intellectual history. Intellectual history refers to the historiography of major ideas and thinkers. One central idea of intellectual history is that historical major ideas have to be viewed in the terms of the culture, lives, and historical contexts that produced them. This paper will discuss the analysis and evaluation of the historical development of American public schooling and what Curti meant when he wrote that the history of American education is a story about the quest for power, a struggle for cultural, economic, and political freedom and equality.
The quest for power has shaped the American educational system since its inception. From colonial times until today, politicians and educators lectured equality and freedom while participating in racial and religious segregation, discrimination against immigrants, and religious intolerance. The power to control the masses through first religion, and then education, is part of America’s history. The Native Americans were introduced to our educational system, learning to write and read English. The colonists taught the Native Americans so that they could control and indoctrinate them into the Anglo-American culture (shunning their native culture) in hopes it would aid in the conquest of more land.
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...haracteristic of American education. Due to these “culture wars” involving religion and education, the public school system created in the nineteenth-century was to keep the dominant Protestant Anglo-American values. With each new surge of immigrants into America, the public school system became the way to keep the Anglo-American values in our culture. The fight with equality continued into the twentieth-century, from civil rights to the multicultural debate, and today, with high stakes testing.
A key part in the history of America’s schools involves clashes over culture and religion, as well as racial and ethnic conflicts. The struggle for power between different aspects in our educational history has shaped the way we learn today.

Spring, J. (2011). The American School: A Global Context from the Puritans to the
Obama Era. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.