Conflict, Class, and the Nineteenth-Century Public High School in the Cities of the Midwest, 1845–1900

ABSTRACT

Focusing largely on three midwestern cities, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago, this study closely examines the conflicts which embroiled the public high school throughout the nineteenth century. Arguments about the legitimacy and fundamental purpose of the urban high school were so widespread, they become known as “the high school question.”

In the early years, the founding of the high school occasioned debates about its purpose and intended students. Throughout the Midwest, these were settled in favor of a coeducational school serving multiple purposes with multiple courses of study. In the burgeoning cities of the region, the demographic background of “the high school question” was the inability of school boards to build schools fast enough to keep up with population growth and rising demands for access to schooling. In this context, the question became, “should we invest in the advanced education of a few before we have provided primary schooling to all who desire it?”

From the 1880s on, attacks on the high school increasingly raised the question of who used it. These attacks were often countered by the presentation of data on the occupational backgrounds of high school student bodies. Such data reveal that high school attendance was neither limited to the wealthy nor available equally to all. Rather, the occupational class distribution was roughly comparable to that of the modern, comprehensive high school of the Progressive era.