We do not present a theory of educational development in this volume. Indeed, we have been impressed by the inadequacy of various one-to-one models that have characterized some recent works relating education to social change in nineteenth-century America, works that argue, implicitly or explicitly, that factory production caused educational reform, that urbanization caused school bureaucracy, that capitalism caused increased enrollments, or that modernization caused increased literacy. When these propositions have been sufficiently specific to test, as in the case of factory production and educational reform, they have at worst proved incorrect and at best provided only a partial picture of educational development. When the explanatory concept is more comprehensive, as with the notion of modernization, the danger lies in reifying the umbrella term into a cause independent of its parts. Furthermore, even among its most talented practitioners, modernization theories are plagued by the equation of modernity with progress and desirable change.

We seek in this volume to describe in detail a complex set of educational developments and to discuss some of their more important cultural, political, and socioeconomic concomitants. Systematic state schooling did not develop in a vacuum. It was not just the gradual evolution of some universally desirable idea. It developed in relationship to the evolving social structure, economic system, and cultural relationships of community, region, and nation. Because schooling had a cultural content more compatible with some groups than with others, and because schooling cost money, both to communities and to individuals, there were predisposing characteristics associated with school participation and educational reform.