Education for Empire: American Schools Race and the Paths of Good Citizenship

About this book

Education for Empire brings together topics in American history often treated separately: schools race immigration and empire building. During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era American imperial ambitions abroad expanded as the countrys public school system grew. How did this imperialism affect public education? School officials teachers and textbook authors used public education to place children both native and foreign-born on multiple uneven paths to citizenship. Using case studies from around the country Clif Stratton deftly shows that public schooling and colonialism were intimately intertwined. This book reveals how studentsfrom Asians in the U.S. West and Hawaii to blacks in the South Mexicans in the Southwest and Puerto Ricans in the Caribbean and New York Citygrappled with the expectations of citizenship imposed by nationalist professionals at the helm of curriculum and policy. Students of American history American studies and the history of education will find Education for Empire an eminently valuable book.