Brougham, Hegel, and American educational reformers: European middle class ideology and its relationship to American educational reform, 1826 to 1883

The main purpose of this thesis is to better determine the ideological foundation of American educational reform from the beginning of the Common School Era to the dawn of the Progressive Era. By understanding the relationship that existed between certain European middle class social theorists and American middle class educational reformers from 1826 to 1883, one is able to gain a great deal of additional insight into the root cause of educational inequality in the United States.; Europe, in addition to providing America with ideas that related to pedagogical methods and educational structure, supplied America with ideas that were used to help American middle class educational reformers rationalize and reinforce their ideology, or social outlook, into the hearts and minds of American citizens. The ideology of an ever-rising middle class in Europe was greeted with enthusiasm in the United States during the Common School Era. In order to implement their social scheme, which was to be a manifestation of their ideology, both the European and American middle classes turned to universal education. Universal education was an effective means to this end.; This study finds that educational inequality was built into the ideology of the middle classes in both Europe and America Educational inequality, in fact, was a reflection of an ideology which held that schools were to be places that could rationalize a new economic arrangement, known as capitalism, in terms of Christian virtue, utilitarianism, and a new sense of egalitarianism.