The Founding Fathers, Education, and "The Great Contest": The American Philosophical Society Prize of 1797 2013th Edition

“Historians are detectives, and the sleuths in this remarkable book show us how to examine important documents from the late eighteenth century. Anyone interested in the effects of the American Revolution will love this book.” – Robert L. Hampel, Professor, School of Education, University of Delaware, USA

“This marvelous collaborative study, edited by Benjamin Justice, explores the views of a group of essay writers about the relationship between public education and citizenship in the new republic. The 1797 essays, five of which have never before been published, are here reproduced and several of their anonymous authors discovered through scholarly detective work. Contributors to the volume explore the way the essay writers dealt with the relationship of religion to education, the silence on the education of African-Americans, the implications of the few comments about women’s education, and how the essayists dealt with the costs and opportunity for education in a nation freeing itself from a restrictive European model of elite education.” – Paul G. E. Clemens, Professor of History, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA