In a number of ways, Chapter 5 is a pivotal chapter for this textbook. It examines perhaps the most dramatic changes in political economy, ideology, and schooling to take place in U.S. history. While the Jeffersonian chapter treated the first fifty years of the republic, and the common schooling chapter treated the transitions in classical liberalism of the next fifty years, Chapter 5 unveils the modern era in American culture and schooling that emerged in the half-century from the 1870s to the 1920s. Chief political-economic changes included the emergence of a largely urban society, immigration from new sources in Asia and southern and eastern Europe, and far-reaching developments in industrialization and monopoly capitalism. Ideologically, classical liberalism was transformed by political, economic, and intellectual developments into a new form of liberalism termed "new," "modern," or "corporate" liberalism. This revised liberalism maintained commitments to scientific rationality, progress, and freedom, but it transformed those commitments to be consistent with the needs of the emerging leaders of government and business.

        The chapter begins by using the Gary school system to illustrate how schools themselves were transformed and how that transformation was publicly justified during the progressive era. School reform became a major priority on the national agenda for members of the business community, journalists, social reformers, educators, and educational psychologists, who began to explain human learning in decidedly new terms. As a result of these reform efforts, new objectives for schooling emerged, including training students with employable skills for the industrial workforce, enhancing social stability, and providing a form of equal educational opportunity that assumed markedly different educational outcomes contingent only on the talent and effort of the students. To achieve those objectives, schools changed sharply in the progressive era in terms of who was required to attend, the different curricula offered to the students, the establishment of extracurricular activities for social and educational aims, and the shift in control of schools from local neighborhoods to centralized school boards comprised largely of businesses and professional class membership.