Item Detail
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12930
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0
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0
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English
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Jacksonian Era in American History Textbooks
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Denver, Colorado
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University of Denver
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Ph.D. diss.
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(Includes a discussion of how Jacksonian era textbooks treated the Mormons.) "This dissertation studies the ideals and anxieties of the Age of Jackson as seen through its American history textbooks. Presenting the values which they wished to transmit to the young, the histories were both the products of and commentators upon the new forces then engulfing the nation. Biographical sketches of the leading fifteen school historians are presented. Taking issue with the commonly held scholarly assessment that these writers represented Puritan-New England values, this study suggests that their lives show great diversity and argues that they reflected the social fluidity of the Jacksonian era. To suggest the various factors operating upon the writing and selection of textbooks, the role of teachers and prevailing attitudes toward them, as well as Jacksonian attitudes towards schools and education, are examined together with the institutional setting of the public school system. The part played by developing technology in the publishing industry, and the marketing of textbooks, is also explored. The writings of George Bancroft, the most comprehensive and influential historian of his era, are reviewed in order to suggest his influence and to dramatize points of contrast between his vision and the schooltexts. The content of the school histories is surveyed as an expression of the Jacksonian era's political and social concerns. In surveying their treatment of major interests in colonial history, modern scholarly interpretations of the Puritans and Anglicans, as well as Roger Williams, William Penn, and the Calverts, are cited as a point of contrast to argue that the textbooks' presentation of colonial religion was a statement of what modern sociologists term "civil religion." The values of the Age of Jackson are also seen in the heroes chosen as cultural symbols. In their treatment of the Mormons the writers projected their era's anxieties, and in ignoring the obvious threat of the slavery issue as too explosive to treat in their textbooks, the school historians formulated guideposts for their young readers as much as in their choice of heroes, interpreted in the light of nineteenth century needs and experience." [Author's abstract]