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Leading historians provide new insights into the founding generation´s views on the place of public education in America. This volume explores enduring themes, such as gender, race, religion, and central vs. local control, in seven essays of the 1790s on how to implement public education in the new USA. The original essays are included as well.

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Foreword; Carl F. Kaestle 1. Introduction; Benjamin Justice PART I: METHODS 2. The Mysterious No. 3; Lisa Green 3. ´Raked from the Rubbish´: Stylometric Authorship Attribution and the 1795 American Philosophical Society Education Contest; Eric Strome PART II: MEANINGS 4. False Start: The Failure of an Early Race to the Top; Campbell Scribner 5. Useful Knowledge in the Early Republic; Nancy Beadie 6. Race and Schooling in Early Republican Philadelphia; Hilary Moss 7. Gender and Citizenship in Educational Plans in the New Republic; Margaret Nash 8. The Significance of the ´French School´ in Early National Female Education; Kim Tolley 9. The Place of Religion in Early National School Plans; Benjamin Justice 10. The Perceived Dangers of Study Abroad, 1780-1800: Nationalism, Internationalism, and the Origins of the American University; Adam Nelson PART III: MATERIALS Essays from the American Philosophical Society Education Contest, 1795-1797 Introduction to the Essays: Reading the Late 18th century in the Early 21st; Benjamin Justice Samuel Harrison Smith, Remarks on Education Rev. Samuel Knox, An Essay on the Best System of Education Review of Essay No.3 Hiram, On Education and Public Schools Academicus, Plan for the Education of Youth Hand, Concerning Education in Public Schools Freedom, Concerning Education in Pennsylvania

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"Historians are detectives, and the sleuths in this remarkable book show us how to examine important documents from the late eighteenth century. Anyone interested in the effects of the American Revolution will love this book." - Robert L. Hampel, Professor, School of Education, University of Delaware, USA

"This marvelous collaborative study, edited by Benjamin Justice, explores the views of a group of essay writers about the relationship between public education and citizenship in the new republic. The 1797 essays, five of which have never before been published, are here reproduced and several of their anonymous authors discovered through scholarly detective work. Contributors to the volume explore the way the essay writers dealt with the relationship of religion to education, the silence on the education of African-Americans, the implications of the few comments about women´s education, and how the essayists dealt with the costs and opportunity for education in a nation freeing itself from a restrictive European model of elite education." - Paul G. E. Clemens, Professor of History, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA

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