NEW SCHOOLING FOR A NEW SOUTH - A COMMUNITY STUDY OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL-CHANGE, 1875-1885

In the mid-1880s, Wilson, North Carolina, was the site of a transition from academies and common schools to graded schools which was closely connected to an expansion of the market economy throughout the South. The new schools were distinctive in two respects. The Wilson graded s chool's curriculum was based on an inductive method of reasoning for t he first time that made children active agents in their own learning, and its disciplinary regime now focused on producing children that wor ked well in bureaucratic institutions. All of this change, however, di d not come about unopposed. Small farmers objected especially to the n ew disciplinary regime that replaced personal and community authority with that of an institution and its managers. And African Americans ob jected, not to the new schooling, but first to a lack of access to it and later to separate and inferior schools for black children that wer e controlled mainly by whites. The result was twofold. Reformers faile d to produce a broad-based constituency for progressive schools, but t hey did succeed in creating a cadre of reformers and an ideology to ju stify the new schools, both of which eventually went on to play a majo r role in the spread of progressive education throughout North Carolin a and the South.