Education in Urban Communities in the United_States: Exploring the Legacy of Lawrence A. Cremin

Lawrence A. Cremin is generally considered one of the most important historians of education in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. The author of numerous books and monographs, Cremin's magnum opus was the three-volume work, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783; American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876; and American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980. 1 Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: 1607-1783 (New York, 1970) L. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (New York, 1980); L. Cremin, American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980 (New York, 1988). In that work Cremin not only examined the various types of formal schooling available in the United States, but also described the numerous social, economic, political, and cultural institutions involved in the education of the American people. Cremin defined "education" broadly as "the deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to transmit, evoke, or acquire knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, or sensibilities, as well as any outcomes of that effort". 2 Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience , p. ii. This paper will examine the ways in which Cremin conceptualized the education of urban populations in the United States in these volumes and other works, and discuss the reception of his "cultural approach" to the study of educational history by United States historians. It will also describe those studies that have utilized the cultural approach in the study of urban education in the United States of America and make some recommendations for future research in this area.