262 History of Education Quarteriy

Conclusion

Since Sizer published The Age of The Academies, a whole generation of scholarship has been written on the social demography of schooling, as well as, more broadly, on family, gender, and class formation in nineteenth- century America. How does the history of academies fit into this larger social history? As summarized in this essay, the limited amount of work that has been done on the social demography and attendance patterns of acade- my students indicates several things. First, academies thrived in the ante- bellum era by serving the high proportion of rural and small-town youth who sought higher study on an episodic basis. Second, these students came from the rural middle classes. Third, academies contributed to the forma- tion of middle-class networks by bringing youth of similar backgrounds, but geographically dispersed locations, together in one place. Fourth, academies contributed to the formation of middle-class culture by provid- ing opportunities for male and female youth to become “self-made” men and women. These opportunities accommodated both the instrumental purpose of improving prospects for white-collar employment and the lib- eral purpose of improving minds and characters.

Where Have All the Academies Gone?

Bruce Leslie

Dignified brick and cobblestone former academies, restored as boutiques, museums, and houses, lend a romantic touch to many small towns and vil- lages of the northern states. Seeming relics of a quaint educational past, these actually are monuments to a ubiquitous institution of nineteenth-cen- tury northern American communities, one that has slipped to the margins

Bruce Leslie, Professor of History in the State University of New York at Brockport, is the author of Gentlemen and Scholars: College and Communiy in the “Age of the Uniuersiy, I’ 1861- 191 7 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1992). He is currently engaged in a study of Danish-American ethnicity with Professor Jody Pennington of Aarhus University, Denmark.

ReappT-aisals of the Academy iZilovenieiit 263

of public memory and inspired few histories.’ Historians most comfortably write about the antecedents and evolution of existing institutions. Those not leaving trails to the present pose evidentiary and conceptual problems.’ Just finding a word to label an institution that crosses modern categories o f p h z a q , seconda?y, and bigher education is difficult.‘

Our instinctive conceptualization of the academy as the forerunner o f the high school obscures its role as the dominant institution of nine- teenth-century higher schooling. Although Nancy Beadie has demonstrat- ed the centrality of the antebellum academy, it has inspired only a modest literature. The academy’s postbellum phase has received even less atten- tion and that usually as a backdrop for the triumph of the public high school. That anticipatory gaze stares straight a t the eventual “winners.”

Thus the problem is to shift our vision from a seemingly inevitable end result and refocus on higher schooling as actually experienced by most participants in the decades after the Civil War. Such a reconceptualization requires stepping back from the educational institutions themselves to cast a broader vision. Towards that end, this essay offers a framework based on four forces that shaped higher schooling during the academy’s latter stage: economic parameters, political structure and culture, higher schooling’s civic and cultural importance. and the education profession’s ambitions. The first step is to identify the forces that underwrote the academy’s hey- day, echoing Nancy Beadie’s insights, thus setting benchmarks against which to measure the academy’s subsequent decline.

I

Tax-supported high schools were politically feasible only in the few cities with large concentrations of “white collar” workers. Even in a boom-

‘Regional differences have been a theme in the literature. This paper only examines the northern version of the academy, one with New England origins and fullest expression in the area stretching from the Hudson Valley to the Plains. Like Nancy Readie, I have derived many of my examples from New York State. The South and U’est pose different problems in different stages of economic development.

‘When researching denominational “colleges” to write Gentlemen aizd Scholars (Vni- versity Park: Penn State University Press, 1992), I initially ignored seemingly irrelevant mate- rial on their academies and other branches. A/lY anachronist categories blinded me to the colleges’ financial dependence on those branches (whose enrollments often dwarfed the those of the college) and to the fact that these were multi-purpose campuses. After all, I was “doing” the history of higher education.

‘Even vocabulary is problematic. Modern classifications of dementmy, secondmy, and higher education distort discussion of academies that, although closest to the middle category, overlapped all three. Perhaps “higher schooling,” which echoes the contemporary term, “high- er branches of learning”, frees us of anachronism.

Two historians have recently invoked “higher schools” and “higher schooling.” Nancy Readie, “From Student Markets to Credential Markets: The Creation of the Regents Exam- ination System in New York State, 1864-1 890,” Histoiy of Education Quarter& 39 (Spring 1999): 1-30, and William J. Reese, The Origins of the Ameriran High School (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), Ch. 2 .

2 64 History of Education Quartedy

town like Rochester, New York, the first high school failed in the 1820s and was converted into an academy. Rochester could not sustain a tax-sup- ported high school until the 1840s, when a maturing urban economy fos- tered sufficient political will and enrollment.’ Nonurban areas had neither.

Academies were a good educational “fit” with commercial and early industrial economies which demanded a modest number of those profes- sions, later called “white collar,” that required higher schooling.’ Thus academies proliferated in small- and medium-sized towns and large villages, the points of economic exchange created by the transportation revolution. These were neither stable “traditional” rural areas nor cities undergoing frantic “modernization.” Small businessmen, merchants, professionals, and large landowners, in other words the “middling classes,” spawned enough youth to provide the base for an academy. In addition, by accommodating part-time and older students, academies fit the varied life cycles of the “old” middle class and maximized attendance.

Academy supporters procured public land grants and other financial incentives to attract new academies but lacked the clout, and perhaps the inclination, to press for a fully tax-supported education beyond common schools. In emerging towns, voluntary associations led by merchants and professionals med to establish order, one with a place for themselves, through lodges, literary clubs, reform societies, and churches. Academies were a nat- ural complement. Placing organizations in the hands of professional experts, such as educational reformers, may have become second nature to the urban middle classes, but not to the leadership of smaller towns and villages6 These are Robert Wiebe’s “island communities,’’ though islands with bridges to the mainland.’

Second, the American constitutional structure and political culture set the parameters of higher schooling. Most obviously the federal absence from education, the lack of an established church, states’ implicit authori-

4M. Lucille Bowen, “The Rochester Free Academy,” in Blake McKelvey (ed.), Educa- tion in Rochester (Rochester: n.p., 1939), 74-100.

’David K. Brown, A Sociology of Edncational Expansion and Occupational Credentialism (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995). Brown’s discussion of matching general attributes of educated people to white collar work, while written about colleges, is suggestive for under- standing academies.

“or the most nuanced description of the antebellum middle class, see Stuart Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

-Theodore Sizer portrays the academy as an essentially rural institution. Theodore Sizer (ed.), The Age ofthe Academies (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1964), 40-41; Robert H . Wiebe, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).

Reese, Originr of the American High School, xiv, distinguishes students in “higher branch- es” among 1) a majority in ungraded rural schools; 2) some in ‘union graded’ schools in vil- lages and towns; and 3) a privileged minority in urban “palaces”, moving beyond a rurahrban dichotomy.

Reappraisals of the Academy Moz‘erncnt 265

ty over education, and early Americans’ fierce localism limited centralized educational policy. Mixtures of sponsorship which would not survive mod- ern constitutional tests, permitted a variety of local options. The secu- larheligious divide was similarly permeable. Most antebellum academies were broadly pan-Protestant, rather than aggressively denominational. In nonurban areas, having a Protestant or specific denominational identity did not usually mean that an institution was private or exclusive.

The pubWprivate boundary was similarly porous. As Kim Tolley’s essay suggests, seeking public funding partially defined the academies. Although in some cities Catholic challenges for public funds prompted clearer privatelpublic distinctions, outside cities mingling private and pub- lic funds remained second nature. A New York legdative committee com- mented in 1838 that academies were part of a “system of public and popular education.” New York State supplied about 20 percent of academies’ rev- enue in 1825 and 15 percent in 18S0.x Thus, what set the urban high schools apart was not procuring public financial support, academies had already done that, but obtaining guaranteed annual support rather than initial grants, state literature funds, and sporadic “top up” funding.

Third, such taxpayer support for hgher schooling cannot be explained solely by economic calculus; academies’ public support stemmed partially from becoming a civic imperative. Convincing antebellum Americans to take up the tax burden of common schools was a tough sell. T o extend the argument that the future of the Republic depended on paying taxes to high- er schooling for a minority of youth was a stretch.

Taxpayer support of higher schooling partially depended on civic boosterism. Paying taxes to launch an academy was part of achieving civic respectability along with having an opera house, decent roads, stately church- es, and civic organizations. However, to ask taxpayers to dig deep into their pocketbooks every year to support a high school would demand a different level of commitment.

If the three factors above explain the level of demand for hgher school- ing, examining the nascent education profession’s ambitions offers a sup- ply side explanation. Urban educational reformers, led by Horace Mann (an academy graduate), envisioned a structured profession led by people

O’Neil suggests that “centers of economic exchange”, not rural areas, were home to most academies. Edward O’Neil, “Private Schools and Public Vision: A History of Academies in Upstate New York, 1800-1860’’ (Ph. D. diss.: Syracuse University, 1984), 117-120.

Roger Geiger’s assertion that small and medium towns provided the denominational- ism and boosterism that best promoted multipurpose colleges reinforces the idea that market towns were academies’ natural habitat. “The Era of Multipurpose Colleges in American High- er Education, 1850-1890,’’ Histoly ofHigher Education Annual IS (199S), 51-92.

RGeorge F. Miller, The Academy System of the State ofNm York (Albany, N.Y.: J.B.Lyon, 1922, repr. 1969), 42 and 76; Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic, 51-2, 117; Sizer, Age of the Academies. 2 5.

266 Histo?y of Education Quarter4

like themselves overseeing a largely female teacher corps trained in normal schools. Their vision included higher schooling in which academies were replaced by age-graded, tax-supported high schools on a rationalized lad- der between common school and college.

However, this was a solution in search of a problem. Only a minori- ty sought higher schooling and academies satisfied most of its desires. Academies were multipurpose institutions open to “part-time and mature students” in today’s parlance. They were reasonably affordable to most who were interested. Offering a purely secondary curriculum to full-time ado- lescents was suicidal outside cities. Thus most academies also catered to common school students who often provided a majority of the enrollment. At academies’ highest level, they overlapped with colleges. Many academies taught courses at collegiate level and competed with colleges for students; their graduates entered colleges a t sophomore standing or higher. In turn, most “colleges” were multipurpose institutions, with a majority of students enrolled in the academy or other subcollegiate studies.’ The Bureau of Edu- cation’s early categorization of academies as “secondary” and colleges as “higher” tried to impose an urban definition on a largely nonurban society.

If the above reasonably explains the academy’s success as an institu- tional form, then explaining its demise requires identifymg the changes that made high schools more attractive. The central problem is to determine why people with enough influence came to see tax-based high schools, rather than academies, to be in their interest.

The high school’s emergence as the dominant form is partially a story of class formation and class dissolution. High schools were urban institu- tions, first created in the cities of the 1820s and 1830s. Elsewhere, they were a glint in school reformers’ eyes long before most wanted to adopt their progeny. Acceptance depended on economic maturation generating more nonmanual occupations requiring advanced literacy and numeracy as well as enough families which could spare their adolescent’s labor. Nancy Bead- ie found that even in the 1880s the New York State Regents advanced exam failed because it was a credential too few found useful. This suggests that the mass of students and parents still did not find formal advanced sec- ondary education credentials necessary in the late nineteenth century.”

’For an excellent case for viewing educators driving markets from the supply side, see Beadie’s, “From Student Markets.” On multipurpose institutions combing academies with collegiate and other studies, see Geiger; “The Era of Multipurpose Colleges;” Leslie, Gentle- men and Scholars; and Nancy Beadie, “From Academy to University in New York State,” His- t o ry ofHigber Education Annual 14 (1994),13-38.

‘“Beadie. “From Student Markets.”

Reuppruisnls of the Academy k i h e n t e n t 267

Eventual acceptance beyond the cities seemingly depended on a grow- ing middle-class consciousness. The offspring of the town and village bour- geoisie were not only influenced by changing local job opportunities and structures; the siren song of urban white-collar work drew armies of young people from the hinterlands.”

The rapid expansion of the “new” white-collar middle class fostered family strategies that fit the age-graded, tax-supported high school. If the academy fit the life cycle and family strategies of the “old” middle class, the high school fit the “new.” Families having fewer children, extending finan- cial support through adolescence, and carefully calculating their children’s future were not attracted to mixed-age, multipurpose academies that pro- vided few credentials.”

While the formal constitutional basis for the federal absence from education did not change, the political culture did. Professional educators were increasingly able to promote their agenda through state departments of education. State influence transmitted urban educational ideas. Although the level of local control remained remarkably high by European standards, creeping state influence reduced the autonomy of local districts.

The publidprivate and religious/secular distinctions solidified after the Civil War. The Fourteenth Amendment provided a constitutional tool to separate church and the states (no longer only church and “the state”) while growing Catholic power fueled the issue emotionally and political- ly.” Labeling high schools “public” and academies “private” began to have meaning.

With growing acceptance of secondary education as a social impera- tive, the high schools assumed the civic role formerly played by academies. Boosterism has commonly explained many academy foundings, but we need to follow it beyond the antebellum frontier version. Co-opting that spirit would have been critical for gaining widespread support for high schools. The twentieth-century high school harnesses amazing waves of communi- ty pride. We need to understand how the boosterism that originally under- wrote academies metamorphosed into its modern form.

Understanding higher schooling’s changing civic role also requires understanding who opposed both academies AND high schools. Our nat- ural bias is to focus on the competition between two educational forms of

“There is a useful discussion of middle-class attitudes across the rurahrban spectrum in Blumin, Ch. 6 and Epilogue. See also Geiger on professions.

“It would be very instructive to have a study of the levels of academy tuition in pro- portion to incomes and wealth. T h e 1850-1870 censuses could be usefully employed.

”Too little is known about the impact of Catholic schools and of the Catholic hierar- chy’s battle for public funds on academies. In turn we need to know how many Catholics turned to academies and high schools rather than parochial schools for ethnic, financial, or other reasons.

268 Histoiy of Education Quarterly

higher schooling. However most people attended neither. Not until the design of the comprehensive high school in a different economy after World War I were a majority of youth drawn into higher schooling.

Among the young, the first strains of youth culture militated against the multiaged academies. High schools were designed for adolescents. The presence of younger, part-time, or older students violated that youth cul- ture. And residential colleges increasingly restricted access to those whom we now ironically call “traditional-aged” students. They wanted separate institutions.’’

Educationists were a profession in waiting. A growing professional cadre finally found a problem that needed their solution. Their desire to supply a tax-supported, secondary, and age-graded system staffed by nor- mal school graduates only found “demand” in a more advanced industrial economy.

State funding for normal schools had contradictory effects on academies. On one hand, the mid-century spate of normal school foundings was a vic- tory for the school reformers championing high schools, who considered academies’ teacher training inadequate. The relatively few academies that became normal schools absorbed much of the state funding previously ear- marked for academies. The transfer of teacher training eliminated the states’ main incentive to fund academies and removed the one profession for which they were the gatekeeper.

On the other hand, normal school funding strengthened the select- ed academies, effectively creating super-academies. Normal schools often remained essentially academies with reinforced teacher-training programs. Most continued to function as the local higher schooling and the Academ- ic Department’s students typically outnumbered the “normals” until around the turn of the century. Only when growing pressures from the state edu- cation departments forced normal schools to shrink or jettison the Aca- demic Departments, were surrounding areas compelled to create separate high schools and normal schools became separate institutions, foregoing their academy roots.”

Through much of the nineteenth century, academies offered advanced courses that exceeded college entrance requirements. After about 1875, many colleges apparently upgraded their admissions criteria, reducing some of their curricular overlap.’6 The growing number of high school graduates

“Reed Ueda, Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social lWobilitj in an American Suburb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 222-3. Leslie, Geiztle- men and Scholars, 189-209, 247-9.

”W. Wayne Dedman, Cherishing This Heritage (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,

‘6Miller, Academy System of the State of N m York, 57. Geiger, “The Era of Multipur- pose Colleges,” 349, n. 2 quotes W.T. Harris’ saying in 1891 that colleges have raised their beginning level by a year and a half since the Civil War.

1969), 234-8.

Renppmisals of the Academy Mouemeii t 2 69

and declining competition aniong Protestant denominations reduced col- leges’ incentive to maintain preparatory departments. Other multipurpose “colleges” terminated their collegiate programs, becoming public high schools or more exclusive and truly private academies.

The 1880s and 1890s institutional reordering and rationalization shaped the educational system that survives today. The story is well known. The public high school became the main provider of what became “sec- ondary” education. Academies were converted into high schools, became “prep” schools, or ceased to exist. They passed from the scene, a historical footnote.

zzz Should historians mourn the academy’s death? The conventional

metaphor misleads us. If the academy “died,” it was an organ donor. Its demise as a structural form may be relatively unimportant, merely an evo- lution of interest only to historians of education. The transformation from academy to tax-supported high school was almost seamless in many com- munities and left few scars. As historians, we may be truer to that reality by writing about “higher schooling” as a single process rather than emphasiz- ing an academy/high school dichotomy, a t least in the postbellum decades.

In evolutionary terms, many of the academy’s traits persisted, its func- tions adopted by normal schools, high schools, “prep” schools, and col- leges. iVore fundamentally, academies established a social base for that unique American contribution to secondary education, the comprehensive high school. Americans would only have voted to support such an unprece- dented experiment with heavy local taxation if they felt some ownership of secondary education. The academy’s association with local pride and boos- terism helped create cultural assumptions that made comprehensive sec- ondary education possible. Academies enabled seemingly elite conceptions of education to gain considerable support in a localistic and populist polit- ical culture.

IV

Early interpretations by historians of the “Cubberley School” echoed Horace Mann’s and other reformers’ portrayal of academies as elitist, thus turning the high school’s triumph into a victory for democratization (i.e., access). Later interpretations portrayed the academy as a casualty of urban- ization, a case most clearly developed by Theodore Sizer in his classic T h e A g e of the Academies. “The academy failed because it was fundamentally a rural institution. . . . This institutional form was inappropriate for an urban center.”“ Succeeding studies have further discredited the democratization

‘-Sizer, Age ofthe Al~aade?mirs, 40-41.

2 70 History of Education Quarterly

thesis, showing that the rise of the high school was not immediately accom- panied by broadened access.’8

Although Sizer’s focus on ruralhrban differences fruitfully turned historiographic attention away from the red herring of democratization, the rurahrban dichotomy is a blunt instrument. Social history written since Sizer’s book enables us to make much more precise distinctions among types of nonurban settings. Studies of the middle class, and particularly the relation of family strategies to youth culture and educational credentials, allow us to begin ascertaining demand more clearly.

Finally, historians increasingly offer a supply-side analysis, suggest- ing that educators promoted the high school in advance of broad-based demand, contrary to educators’ institution building rhetoric. The high school was an institution that modernization and the development of an educational profession eventually made relevant. But the academy suited the needs of most American communities far better until the late nineteenth century. That interpretation challenges the founding myth of the educa- tion profession as a selfless vocation merely responding to society’s needs. Future studies of the role of the mature academy and its relationship to high schools must be rooted in a realistic assessment of nineteenth-centu- ry America that is clouded neither by the rhetoric of the past nor the clas- sifications of the present.

‘”For historiographic overviews see, O’Neil, “Private Schools and Public Vision,” Ch. 1; Beadie, “From Student Markets,” 27-30.