Mitigating mental and moral stagnation: Summer education and American public schools, 1840-1990.

Abstract

In spite of current scholarly and political interest in the educational value of summer school, policymakers looking to the past for guidance find little of utility in the historiography. Researchers have quantified the setback from summer vacation and the marginal results of summer school without considering the origins and growth of summer education in public schools. This dissertation attempts to fill this gap in historical knowledge about summer education using theoretical paradigms of time construction and state formation. Overall, it argues that formalized learning in the summer has always occupied and influenced American public education systems. It suggests that in return, schools shaped larger American cultural patterns and experiences related to summer. This work treats summer education at the K-12 level from national, state, and local perspectives. By compiling data tabulated by city, county, and state superintendents from Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Virginia, it measures the extent of summer schooling over the last 150 years. It also incorporates substantial quantitative analysis to emphasize summer school variation by region and level of urbanization. In particular, multiple regression and diffusion analyses illustrate the characteristics of school systems showing innovation in summer education in the early twentieth century. By analyzing the writings of educators, philanthropists, and social reformers, it examines the ideologies and policies that have shaped summer education. Its study of school calendar developments debunks myths of agrarian functionalism by highlighting the use of the state to shorten urban terms, lengthen rural terms, and eliminate summer sessions during the nineteenth century. Its narrative of the subsequent vacation school movement demonstrates a transformation from recreational to academic summer programs due to the public take over of these previously private philanthropic endeavors. Its case studies of summer schools in the 1920s uncover the origins and persistence of the stigma attached to them. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that current initiatives on school year lengths and summer school practice consider both narrow educational and broader societal interests.