Essay by United States Commissioner of Education Earl James McGrath, The Year Book of Education--United States of America

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THE YEAR BOOK OF EDUCATION United States of America * The tap-roots of public education in the United States are essentially the same as those in Great Britain. Indeed, most of the original ideas on what and how to teach were brought to the New World by the early English colonists. Others were imported later as they took shape on the Continent, and became established in their original or modified form in England. American education was originally for the elite, not for the masses. It was regarded as a parental and private obligation to youth, not as a public responsibility. It had its origins in religion and was controlled by religious bodies. It was concerned with the training of the mind and of the soul, and early American educators saw little relationship between the content and processes of education and the daily problems of making a living, or building and maintaining a social economy. Beyond these similarities, however, there have always been certain significant differences between the nature and purposes of education in the United States and in Great Britain. For one thing, the United States never had a clearly defined aristocracy with inherited rights, privileges, titles, and similar trappings. Individual worth and achievement, not family status, became the major qualification for rising in the social scale and for achieving economic success and political preferment. The accumulation of wealth, and the skill to produce it, have always been accorded much greater importance * By Earl J. McCrath, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Federal Security Agency, Washington, D.C., published in the 1952 Yearbook of Education pp . 223-251.