As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz (2008) demonstrate in their recent book The Race between Education and Technology, the United States was a world leader in education through much of its history. In the nineteenth century, the United States led the way in providing free and accessible elementary education. In part this reflected the American ideal that every citizen should be educated, so that they could participate in the political life of the nation; in part it reflected an economic reality that education led to higher paying jobs. To be sure, there were important exceptions, such as the provisions for schooling African Americans, but most native white families had access to “free” public educations for their children, usually financed by property taxes and
The Central High School Class of 1890, Dayton Ohio. The young man to the right of the entrance is Paul Lawrence Dunbar who would win international acclaim for his poetry and prose. The young man in the center of the entrance is Orville Wright who would win international acclaim as a pioneer aviator. America’s investment in education paid dividends.
Supplied by local governments. In the first part of the twentieth century, Americans went to high school. In 1900 the typical young native-born American had a grade-school education, and by 1940 a typical young native-born American was a high school graduate (Goldin and Katz 2008, 164). Most of this had been financed at the local level. Parents demanded high schools for their children because it was clear that high school was a good investment: High school graduates earned more than young people with only a grade school education. Employers, moreover, could see that more education led to a more productive workforce, and the public could see that it led to a better informed and more productive democracy. America’s thirst for education did not stop with high school. After World War II a college education became part of the American way of life for most people in the middle class, as well as for those who were aspiring to be middle class. The famous GI bill after World War II contributed to this trend, but the college movement persisted long after the wartime generation of Americans had passed through college. Finally, American universities became world leaders in the sciences, social sciences, and other academic disciplines. College graduates from the United States and around the world sought advanced degrees in American universities. It is a triumphant story, but in the last part of the twentieth century, there were disturbing signs of retrogression in American education that we will take up in the next section.
World History
