The tangled roots of real estate markets, the state, and public education

ABSTRACT

In this article, I use a case study of education in nineteenth-century Oregon to place the twentieth-century phenomenon of ‘shopping for schools’ within a broader historical context. In doing so, I make three points. First, documenting previously unacknowledged links between the spread of public education and efforts to market land, I suggest that education, real estate markets, and the state have deeper and more tangled roots than scholars have imagined. Second, I contend that wrestling with these tangled roots suggests the need for scholars to reexamine the role of private markets in shaping the organisation of educational opportunity across places and time. Third, I argue that histories like Oregon’s demonstrate that ‘state’ and ‘market’ are neither stable nor mutually exclusive categories.

KEYWORDS:

• History of education
• markets and school reform
• commodification of public schooling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Matthew Gardner Kelly is a doctoral candidate in Educational Policy and the History of Education at Stanford University.

Notes

1. See, for example, the pamphlets in box 2, folder 3, Pacific Northwest Promotional Brochures Collection, Oregon Historical Society and box 4, folder 2, Pacific Northwest Promotional Brochures Collection, Oregon Historical Society.