America's Universal Education System Exists From a Coalition of Progressives, the Know-Nothing Party, and the Ku Klux Klan

History Unplugged Podcast · Aug 23, 2022 · 1h 12m

In a remarkably short span of time, American children went from laboring on family farms to spending their days in classrooms. The change came from optimistic reformers like Horace Mann, who in the early 1800s dreamed of education, literacy, and science spreading throughout all levels of American society. But other supporters of universal education had darker motives. They feared the influx of Irish Catholic immigrants and thought they'd bring their papist ideas to the young republic. Only compulsory education could break these European children of their Catholic ways and transform them into…