The laudatory tradition of educational history that prevailed in the United States until the 1950s emphasized democracy, opportunity, humanitarianism, enlightenment, and the development of an American consensus as motives for public schooling. Historians of education, often committed to the schools of their day by virtue of their positions as school administrators or education professors, saw public schools as the engines of American democracy, as the bulwark of free institutions, and as the “balance wheel of the social machinery,” in Horace Mann's famous phrase. This tradition emphasized the relationship of schooling to the political system and to the development of a common American culture. It was an idealist tradition, which was, and still is, widely shared by the American public.

The past fifteen years, however, have seen a pendulum swing among some historians on questions about the initial and continuing purposes of public schooling. A new critical view has emerged, emphasizing socioeconomic realities rather than political ideals. Revisionist historians have emphasized class and cultural conflict, bureaucracy, and the schools' role in inculcating submissive attitudes. Their work constitutes a reaction against the old history of education, and also against the consensus view of American history of the 1950s. Although their normative perspective is often much more negative, the revisionists share a basic assumption of their predecessors: They assume that the structure and content of public schooling have been largely determined by the political and economic system in America.