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William Maclure and Education for a Good Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Extract
It is strange in these days of increasing demands on the school that voices from an age of unlimited faith in the power of schooling—such voices as that of George Counts in the 1930's, Lester Frank Ward in the 1890's, or William Maclure in the 1830's—sound strangely archaic. In some respects our age expects more of the schools than did theirs; in others—particularly in the domain of social reform—vastly less. When set against their hopes and dreams, ours are trivial. Perhaps so are our efforts.
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References
Notes
1. Quoted by Cumming, Ian, Helvetius: His Life and Place in the History of Educational Thought (London, 1955), 225.Google Scholar
2. Of the several studies of the Owenite community at New Harmony, Indiana, the most useful to the historian is Arthur E. Bestor's Backwoods Utopias; The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663–1829 (Philadelphia, 1950).Google Scholar
3. Erving, George W. to Maclure, William, September 14, 1830, New Harmony Correspondence, Folder 25, I.25.2 (New Harmony Working Men's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana).Google Scholar
4. Maclure, William, Opinions on Various Subjects, Dedicated to the Industrious Producers, 2 vols. (New Harmony, 1831–1837.)Google Scholar
5. Ibid., II:87.Google Scholar
6. Ibid., I:72.Google Scholar
7. Ibid., 25.Google Scholar
8. Ibid., 67.Google Scholar
9. Ibid., II:346 f.Google Scholar
10. Ibid., I:33.Google Scholar
11. Ibid., 70, 72.Google Scholar
12. Bestor, Arthur E. Jr., “Education and Reform at New Harmony; Correspondence of William Maclure and Marie Duclos Fretageot,” in Indiana Historical Society Publications , XV (1948), 301.Google Scholar
13. Maclure, , Opinions, II:458, 467.Google Scholar
14. Ibid., I:62; Bestor, , “Education and Reform,” 294.Google Scholar
15. Maclure, , Opinions, I:95, 184, II:211 f; Bestor, “Education and Reform,” 389.Google Scholar
16. Quoted by Monroe, Will S., The History of the Pestalozzian Movement in the United States (Syracuse. 1907), 51f, 58, 110 f. In line with practices of such reformers as Emmanuel Fellenberg, products of student labor were sold or consumed locally to help defray school costs.Google Scholar
17. Bestor, , “Education and Reform,” 306.Google Scholar
18. Maclure, , Opinions, II:102f.Google Scholar
19. Ibid., I:57.Google Scholar
20. Ibid., 57 f, 81.Google Scholar
21. Ibid., II:287.Google Scholar
22. Ibid. In 1822 Maclure told Benjamin Silliman of Yale, “In reflecting upon the absurdity of my own classical education, launched into the world as ignorant as a pig of anything useful, … I had been long in the habit of considering education one of the greatest abuses our species were guilty of ….” Bestor, , “Education and Reform,” 293.Google Scholar
23. Maclure, , Opinions, I:394, II:303 f, 361, 513, 524, 545–549. Maclure's denunciations of history echoed Voltaire's charge that “the history of great events in the world is scarcely more than a history of crimes.” See Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1961), 93.Google Scholar
24. Maclure, , Opinions, II:209, 508. Emphasis mine.Google Scholar
25. Ibid., I:93 f.Google Scholar
26. Ibid., II:100.Google Scholar
27. Ibid., 102 f, 99–103.Google Scholar
28. Ibid., 309.Google Scholar
29. At this point Maclure once relented in his insistence that adults could not change their views. One of the rewards of boarding schools would be a new attitude on the part of the parents, he suggested. “The improvement of the child will conduce to a change in the parent, and civilization be advanced at both ends.” In still another mood, however, Maclure resigned himself to the point of view that came to dominate his thought on the subject: “no good system of education can have a fair tryal but with orphans ….” His overarching program nonetheless continued to be premised on the gradual transformation of society through universal boarding school education for both sexes. See Bestor, , “Education and Reform,” 301, 308f, 351. For a brief analysis of the role Renaissance humanists assigned to parents see R. E. Hughes, “Lilliputian Education and the Renaissance Ideal,” in History of Education Quarterly, I (March, 1961): 22–27. For relevant information on educational thought among the Shakers see Lucy Wright, The Gospel Monitor. A Little Book of Mother Ann's Word to those who are placed as Instructors and Caretakers of Children…. (Canterbury, N. H., 1843), passim; A Juvenile Guide, or Manual of Good Manners…. (Canterbury, N. H., 1844), passim; Edward D. Andrews, The People Called Shakers (New York, 1953), 177–204.Google Scholar
30. For illustrations of the reconstructionism in the educational thought of Owen, , Hall, , and Skinner, see Heathcote Thomson, Keith. “The Educational Work of Robert Dale Owen” (doctoral dissertation, University of California, 1948); G. Stanley Hall, “The Fall of Atlantis,” in Recreations of a Psychologist (New York, 1920), 1–127; B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (New York, 1948).Google Scholar
31. Maclure, , Opinions, II:163.Google Scholar
32. Ibid., 207.Google Scholar
33. Maclure, , Opinions, I:116, II:339.Google Scholar
34. Ibid., I:113 f. Jefferson, , in one mood, held nearly the same view: “Were it necessary to give up either the Primaries or the University, I would rather abandon the last, because it is safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened, than a few in a high state of science, and the many in ignorance. This last is the most dangerous state in which a nation can be. The nations and governments of Europe are so many proofs of it.” Early History of the University of Virginia as Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Randolph, J. W., ed. (Richmond, 1856), 267f.Google Scholar
35. Maclure, , Opinions, II:208f.Google Scholar
36. Ibid., 128, 169, 208 f, 307. Alexis de Tocqueville noted that one of the impressive factors in America's experiment in democracy was that Americans generally accepted self-interest as their motive for action. See his Democracy in America, 2 vols. Reeve, H. text, rev. by Bowen, Francis, Bradley, Phillips (New York, 1954), II:129 et seq. Google Scholar
37. Maclure, , Opinions, I:42, II: 163. The concept of the teacher as a “hireling” was defended notably by Jacob Abbot. He bluntly told the teacher to learn his “place,” to confine himself to his “proper sphere.” School boards represented local opinion; they should set school policy. Even “if they wish to have a course pursued which is manifestly inexpedient or wrong, they still have a right to decide.” Jacob Abbot, The Teacher; or Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and Government of the Young (1834), 239. Quoted by Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History to 1860 (Minneapolis, 1944), 243 f.Google Scholar
38. Maclure, , Opinions, II:29, 398, 429.Google Scholar
39. Ibid., I:447, II:29, 58, 524.Google Scholar
40. Ibid., 154, 301 f.Google Scholar
41. Trollope, Frances, Domestic Manners of the Americans, Smalley, Donald, ed. (New York, 1960), xx, xxi, 10 ff.Google Scholar
42. Williams, William A., Contours of American History (Cleveland, 1961), 232.Google Scholar
43. Maclure, William to Erving, George W., February 20, 1830, New Harmony Correspondence, Folder 22, 1.22.12 (New Harmony Working Men's Institute).Google Scholar
44. Many modern scholars have noted this significant metamorphosis of the meaning of equality. See, for example, Fromm, Erich, The Art of Loving (New York, 1956), 14ff; Vern Sayers, Ephraim and Madden, Ward, Education and the Democratic Faith (New York, 1959), 51–57.Google Scholar
45. Maclure, , Opinions, II:209, 508.Google Scholar
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