The Origins of Public High Schools

Extract

The essays below continue a debate that began with the publication of Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). One celebrated part of this important work was a study of the controversy over the public high school in Beverly, Massachusetts, including a close analysis of the vote in 1860 to abolish the school. The occasion for these essays is the publication of Maris A. Vinovskis, The Origins of Public High Schools: A Reexamination of the Beverly High School Controversy (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). The first essay is a review of the Vinovskis study by Katz, now professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania; the second is a review by Edward Stevens, Jr., professor of education at Ohio University; the third is a response to these reviews by Vinovskis, professor of history and research scientist at the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.