Ideology of the American Dream:
Two Competing Philosophies of Education, 1776 - 2006
Two Competing Philosophies of Education, 1776 - 2006
Introduction
This essay introduces a revisionist interpretation of the American Revolution and the formation of the United States of
America. It argues for an historical emphasis on conflict in the emerging democracy where segmented classes vied for
representational access to the formation of the founding documents and to the emerging federal structure of the new
nation. This essay puts forth two competing notions of the American dream, one radical and one conservative (both put
forth by Thomas Jefferson), as the basis for two competing public philosophies of American democracy and education.
This essay traces out the main structures of the social-political-cultural-economical history informing the context of these
two competing public philosophies, especially in relation to the evolution of education in America, whereby this essay
highlights the Common School reform movement and the Progressive/technocratic reform movement as two moments
where versions of the ideology of the American dream were invoked to legitimate school reforms. The ideology of the
American dream (in its two most influential manifestations) is still a potent philosophical means for constructing reformist
discourses for American politics and education (Bronfenbrenner et al. 1996, Patterson 2001, Hochschild & Scovronick 2003,
Jillson 2004, The Economist 2005), and invariably surrounds the unrealized promises found within the Declaration of
Independence for all elements of a diverse society. This essay traces the framework of this still conflicting discussion so as
to carry the unfinished business of the American dream into the 21st century and open its unfilled promise to future
generations.
Conflicting Notions of America
What has been called the American Revolution was more a bourgeois revolt. A landed aristocracy, which was
enfranchised predominately due to slave labor and indentured servitude, formed a coalition with a sizable middle class.
This American aristocracy skillfully spun an obfuscated rhetoric of unification against a common enemy, England, using
language that incorporated fragments of a radical political discourse (Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson), but which rested
upon and stressed a more conservative preoccupation with authority, property, and asymmetric power structures
(Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Adams, Washington and also, paradoxically, Jefferson). Propagandizing “We the people” as a
“united” band of “Americans,” the founding generation of statesmen was able to manufacture the semblance of a
common cause (Hamilton et al. 1788/1961, 94). However, as Joseph J. Ellis has noted, “different factions” bought into this
“common cause” in order to get rid of the British, but then “discovered in the aftermath of their triumph that they had
fundamentally different and politically incompatible notions” on which to found a new country (2000, 10, 15). These
“politically incompatible notions” cemented a “contradiction” (16) in the very fabric of the emerging nation and when
this foundational contradiction surfaced in political debates, the “dominant legacy,” as Ellis explains, “was avoidance and
silence” (241) – a silence that has lasted almost 200 years.
In “The Indians’ Revolution,” Francis Jennings described the social landscape surrounding the Revolutionary War as a
“multiplicity of variously oppressed and exploited peoples who preyed upon each other” (Zinn 1999, 88). After the war a
great debate ensued over adopting the Constitution and setting the framework for a Federal government. Despite all the
rhetoric of freedom and equality, Howard Zinn (1999) describes the Constitution as a document working to “maintain” the
privileges of certain groups while “giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular
support” (91, 97). Thus, this hallowed political document could afford to leave out four major second-class segments of
American society: slaves, indentured servants, women, and men without property (Beard 1913/1986, Loewen 1995, Zinn
1999) – not to mention the precarious position of a fifth segment, Native Americans, who as persecuted minority were
largely ignored by the country’s founding documents, thus, enabling centuries of exploitation by the political and legal
system (Loewen 1995, Calloway 1995, Brown 1970).
The American Constitution and the ensuing American Federal government were the work of a “relatively small number of
leaders who knew each other, who collaborated and collided with one another” (Ellis 2000). There was no such thing as
the “American people” until this aristocratic band invented the term to manufacture a unified base in order to fight the
Revolutionary war and then, later, to serenade enough voters to allow a strong federal government to bind the 13 states
together into a “Union” (10, 13). But within the burgeoning American aristocracy there was a “debate” between
liberals/individualists and conservatives/nationalists, which, as Joseph J. Ellis writes, “was not resolved so much as built into
the fabric of our national identity:” “the United States is founded on a contradiction” (16).
This becomes clear in reading The Federalist, especially #10 written by James Madison (Hamilton et al. 1788/1961).
Madison proposed that the advantage of a strong federal government would be its ability to “break and control the
violence of faction” because too often measures are decided not by the “rules of justice” and the “rights of the minor
party” (read: white male aristocracy), but are instead decided by the “superior force” of the “interested” and
“overbearing majority” (read: un-propertied white males). This situation had created a “distrust of public engagements”
and an “alarm for private rights” (read: private property). Madison went on to label this “overbearing majority” a
“faction,” which he defined as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are
united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the
permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Of course he was really saying, “the most common and durable
sources of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property,” thus the primary job of the government is to
regulate and mediate the various “interests” of the propertied classes while simultaneously controlling the “interests” of
the propertied and un-propertied (read: keeping the unequal balance of power).
Outside of the emphatic class-based economic preoccupations of the founding fathers, there was also an ideological
vision at work, infusing the peripheries of the practical with an airy quality that would imbue the contradictions of the
American project with a paradoxical hope. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is perhaps the locus of that enduring
myth, which has often been called the American Dream. This vision made many democratic ideals sacred: equality;
inalienable rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and property); government ruled by consent of governed; laws
for public good; principles of freedom (Jefferson 1776/1903/1995). Joseph J. Ellis (1997) went so far as to argue that the
American dream was in essence “the Jeffersonian dream writ large” (59). But as Ellis’ analysis makes clear, this is not
unqualified praise. Jefferson was a “disappointed idealist” (287) and his soaring political vision was always “magisterial in
conception, admirable in intention, unworkable in practice” (280). Jefferson’s vision of a radical American Dream and his
proposition that education in a republic should work towards preventing tyranny were admirable principles, but they were
only selectively applied – if at all – to free white males (Cremin 1980, 113-14; Foner 1998).
The reality of the emerging American republic never fit well with Jefferson’s agrarian or democratic ideals, but even his
vision was fatally flawed. His notions of agrarian democracy were based on the plantocracy’s exploitation of slave labor
and indentured servitude, while his educational vision was only for propertied, white males. He even used his slaves to
build what he hoped would become an Enlightenment citadel of timeless truth (for whites only until the early 1970s), the
University of Virginia. Maxine Greene (1988) has shown how in practice Jefferson’s lofty vision, compounded by the
contradictions within the nation (and within Jefferson’s own mind), advanced a counter-ideal, which competed with the
more radical ideal found in the Declaration of Independence. This counter-ideal can be labeled the conservative
American Dream and it was shaped by the contradictions of the American experiment. This ambivalent and conservative
vision reinforced a “selective” and “hierarchical” “meritocratic system,” whereby (to use Jefferson’s own language) only
the “best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish” (28-29). This other American Dream was based on aristocratic principles
such as authority, order, inequitable property distribution, submissive masses, and a ruling elite. The myth perpetuated by
the conservative American Dream was a land of opportunity ripe for the talented few who could seize and exploit that
opportunity, while the masses of impoverished “rubbish” lived in the shadow of Providence.
Many exemplary lives were held up during the early republic in order to reinforce this aristocratically infused myth of
meritocracy. The life of Benjamin Franklin, who in many ways was a radical figure, came to serve as one of the most
powerful examples of the conservative American Dream – in large part due to the tireless self-promotion of Franklin
himself. Benjamin Franklin’s life was a great success story of rags to riches, whereby, his achievements were praised as the
result of a strict adherence to the Puritan work ethic (Weber 1905/2002, Tawney 1922/1962, Franklin 1771/1998, 84-89):
temperance, self-reliance, and self-education. In his Autobiography (1771/1998), Franklin proudly declared his belief in
divine “Providence,” which rewarded “Industrious” men with “Wealth and Distinction” (81, 82). Franklin’s exemplary life of
“Progress” was due to his individual “Virtue” (88) and his tireless drive for self-education. Franklin’s Autobiography
preached the virtuous duty of every individual to work hard and to help himself succeed, which would thereby lead (via
Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”) to the general prosperity of society and the good of all.
Meritocracy, the conservative notion of the American Dream, praised self-reliance, hard work, frugality, dutiful industry,
success, and prosperity. In the nineteenth century this ideal would displace Jefferson’s more radical American Dream and
it would become the binding ideology of the nation, and the prime directive of its emerging system of schools. While on
the surface, meritocracy held a distinct democratic advance over traditional European systems of aristocratic blood and
inherited wealth, but in practice and in relation to the larger socio-economic systems of American power, the
conservative American Dream held false as an empowering ideology. For it ended up not so much raising the few “best
geniuses,” but of blaming and condemning those who were stuck in the “rubbish” and, further, it solidified an inequitable
class system predicated on atomized individualism and exploitative capitalistic relations of power.
A “Common” Culture? A “Common” School?
American education during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was rooted in a highly decentralized, local, and
private approach to schooling, often based in the home, and infused with a Euro-centric, fundamentalist Protestant
ideology, which meant almost exclusive use of the Bible as the central curriculum. By the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, small one-room schoolhouses were numerous and education became more of a community-oriented affair,
although it was still predominately religious in outlook. The primary purpose of schooling was to indoctrinate the young into
a “Protestant-republican ideology” (Tyack & Hansot 1982, 18) in order to inculcate religious faith and morality, while
encouraging participation in local communities, state assemblies, and the growing Federal government.
During the early nineteenth century, to take one example, the citizens of Sugar Creek, Illinois built a small one room
structure called the “meeting and school house,” which was the “center of neighborhood activity” (Faragher 1986, 123,
128), but principally the sight of a local subscription school. Each child’s family would contribute a small amount to pay the
schoolmaster who taught classes seasonally so children could fulfill their primary responsibilities on the family farm.
Education in these early community schools was often crude and far from democratic. Faragher described the common
nineteenth century teaching method as “memorization and recitation; students learned their lessons by rote” (124).
Faragher also documented how teachers “frequently employed the rod,” which, one winter in 1838, incited a small
controversy in Sugar Creek when a teacher severely beat one of his students, causing one local to angrily write about how
the schoolmaster could “torture as well as teach” (122).
Nineteenth century America was largely composed of small democratic townships like Sugar Creek, averaging a couple
thousand people, and American democracy during this time, as described by the French liberal-aristocratic philosopher
Alexis de Tocqueville, was highly localized and decentralized (1835/2002, 61-79). In Democracy and America, Tocqueville
described two ideological forces at work within the early American republic, which he thought were “diverse but not
contrary:” a “sprit of religion” and a “spirit of freedom” (43). He went on to describe these forces in detail:
In the moral world, everything is classified, coordinated, foreseen, decided in advance. In the political world, everything is agitated, contested,
uncertain; in the one, there is passive though voluntary obedience; in the other, there are independence, contempt for experience, and
jealousy of every authority. (43)
Being aware of these two ideological forces, the founding fathers succeeded in constructing a Federal government and a
semblance of national unity that for a time seemed to separate the “spirit of freedom” and “spirit of religion” via a
conscious motivation to keep the realm of religion (culture) apart from the divisive realm of politics so as to avoid the
pitfalls of continental Europe ravaged by centuries of violent cultural wars (Fraser 1999). In the cultural/religious realm, a
Protestant oriented world-view envisioned the predestined will of God directing the emerging American nation toward a
millennial future, while the highly factionalized and practical political realm was a growing furnace of conflict and dispute,
testing the endurance of the Federal system and the strength of the fragile idea of national unity. Factional disputes
threatened the stability of the centralized government due to the frenzies of localized politics, the influx of European
immigrants, the friction between Northern and Southern states, and the expanding Western frontier of Jefferson’s
Louisiana purchase. The growing social diversity, the secularization of government, the harshness of the frontier, the
continuing Indian wars, and the often-violent confrontations between political factions (especially between abolitionists
and slave holders) really troubled the comfortably located Pietistic and evangelical middle class citizens of New England
(Tyack & Hansot 1982, Fraser 1999).
A large religious revival emerged in the early nineteenth century to combat what was seen as the disintegration of the
American republic due to the sectarian conflict, self-interest, and the seeming godless chaos of the political realm. One
of the major bi-products of the revival was the “Common School” movement. Horace Mann formed the Common School
movement out of the belief that schools and churches should be “institutions designed to produce a homogeneous moral
and civic order and a providential prosperity” (Tyack & Hansot 1982, 19). Reformers like Mann preached the virtues of a
nationalistic Americanism, patriotism, godliness, prosperity, aversion to conflict, and capitalism (21-28). The Common
School was touted as an institution serving the public interest, but it was above all else a pan-Protestant religious revival
and missionary enterprise that clearly benefited urban and rural elites, indoctrinated new immigrant populations into the
stratified capitalistic order, and employed the growing and ever pietistic middle class in a self-serving moral crusade. The
conservative, evangelical and nativist reformer Horace Mann preached a pacifying platform of political “neutrality” and
“civic morality” (61), whereby, the Common School as a “thousand-eyed police” (Reese 2000, 23) was fashioned to
administer order on behalf of ruling political elites, the pietistic fears of middle class evangelicals, and the growing
industrial economy.
The American South was a special case of inequality and educational social control. Schooling was a jaundiced institution
that enforced an inequitable and oppressive status quo under rhetorics of Southern exceptionalism, pan-Protestantism,
and racialized Americanism. Unlike the North, the Southern states were organized by an extremely rigid caste based on a
feudal hierarchy of race, gender, and class (Anderson 1988). Schooling was an option for only a small minority of wealthy,
white elites. Tyack & Hansot (1982) comment on how Southern elites saw public schooling as a “threat to the social order”
because a Common School movement had the potential to upset the ritualized oppression of both “poor and powerless”
whites and the Southern “class of noncitizens,” the black slaves (85). The small degree of schooling that went on in the
South was purely for the benefit of white elites so as to breed a genteel cadre of aristocratic privilege to perpetuate the
cruel and unjust Southern caste system and to manage the cultivation and distribution of vast plantation resources.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Common School movement spread across the county and preached the
virtues of social mobility, individual responsibility, hard work, and morality so as to inaugurate a meritocratic system
embodying the conservative American dream. Many saw American schools as a progressive turn from the aristocratic
classes of Europe, but below the surface lurked deeply rooted structural inequality. The American economic system firmly
concentrated the wealth of the nation in the hands of a small, elite minority. Over the course of the nineteenth century,
wealth became more concentrated and the gap between rich and poor increased dramatically (Reese 2000, 24; Phillips
2002; Bronfenbrenner et al. 1996). Within this context, American schools were a battleground marked by diverse interests
each seeking a path to security and prosperity for their children. Working classes and racial minorities increasingly fought
over access to schools, but ironically, simple access to schools was not enough to succeed in America. In fact, as schools
became more populated and diverse, the curriculum became more differentiated so as to steer working class students
back down into the underside of the Industrial economy.
In light of the structural determinants of class, race, and gender, the Common Schools were not really designed as
democratic instruments for the good of all. In fact, the emerging system of schools seemed very much at the service of
Madison’s elite cadre of wealthy men seeking to check the unruly “factions” of the working class, immigrants, and racial
minorities. Given widespread structural inequality, the Common School rhetoric of progressive optimism obfuscated the
deeper problems of American society. Take for example an excerpt from William T. Harris:
Education protects one class against another by giving an opportunity to the children of all classes free competition in the struggle to become
intelligent and virtuous. An aristocracy built on the accident of birth, wealth, or position can not resist the counter-influence of a system of free
schools wherein all are given the same chances. (Reese, 30)
Not all “classes” had equal access to education (most lower class and ethnic minorities had to struggle for inclusion). And
when diverse socio-economic and ethnic classes did mix within the public schools, there was little “free competition”
where institutional racism, concentrated social capital, and stark economic inequality pervaded the political ecology of
the school. It seems clear that over the course of the nineteenth century not all children were “given the same chances”
and that the American aristocracy “built on the accident of birth” did quite well in defending its interests and expanding
its domain.
The structure of the nineteenth century U. S. economy benefited wealthy industrial and plantation elites (Phillips 2002) as
well as an emerging middle-class. The American economic system fed off of indentured servants, women, and, after the
Antebellum period, an impoverished and racialized industrial working class – not to mention the displacement of Native
Americans and Spanish Americans enabling the usurpation of Western lands. Working classes and immigrant populations
were squeezed of their labor in order to produce huge pools of capital that expanded the borders, yet consolidated
access to the vast national enterprise of “manifest destiny” and prosperity into relatively few hands. The conservative
American dream preached the virtues of competition and individual struggle, but it ignored the structural framework that
gave certain individuals, via their favorable race, class position, and inherited/exploited wealth, extreme advantages,
while it placed insurmountable obstacles in the path of other individuals, via lower class positions, not to mention the
abject oppression of African Americans slaves and Native American “savages.” However, despite its hollow morality and
hypocritical principles, at the turn of the nineteenth century the conservative American dream of meritocracy remained a
strong ideal in the minds of most educational leaders, and it marked the guiding philosophy of the Progressive era
reformers who would set up a centrally administered and federally funded system of education that remains to this day.
Two Visions of Democracy
At the turn of the twentieth century the birth of motion pictures heralded a widespread glimpse of human ingenuity and
technological progress. If one were to analyze the work of two of the most influential movie stars of the silent picture era
one would see contrasting characterizations of the American dream along the radical and conservative lines that have
been sketched in this essay. Harold Lloyd constructed a comic persona, in the words of the film historian and critic Gerald
Mast (1979) that was “pure literature:”
Harold is the affable boy next door, anxious to get ahead, not very good at anything, but willing to compensate with energy for his lack of
talent. He is the American Dream of what a mediocre man can accomplish with a lot of hard work…“he can do anything he tries”…the motto
of all of Lloyd’s films…earning a success defined by other people’s standards…[Lloyd’s films] take place in a literary world where banal values
are taken for granted and clichés of human conduct go unquestioned. (152)
In Lloyd’s most famous feature film, Safety Last (1923), he braves insurmountable obstacles in the fast paced capitalist
world of New York City to win, through his tenacity, hard work, and quick thinking, a successful career, which will enable him
to marry the woman he loves. This conception of the American dream is in stark contrast to the more dramatic films of
Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin, whom Mast calls “the greatest film artist in motion-picture history” (62), built up a body of work
surrounding a down and out tramp who, as hard as he tries, cannot succeed in the brutal streets of capitalist America. The
tramp is “doomed to fail at obtaining earthly rewards” (72), and thus he bumps across the ravages of the industrial
landscape inadvertently examining the discrepancy between the “apparent” surfaces and the “real” substance of the
American dream (110). In film after film (most notably his 1936 classic Modern Times), Chaplin exposes the hypocrisies of
the meritocratic ideal by showing how the structural determinants of the capitalistic and industrial order keep many
Americans stuck in the mean streets of an urban-industrial environment. Given the ecology of inequality, as characterized
in The Kid, Chaplin poked malicious fun at the moral sermonizing and good works of middle class reformers whose
ideological and behavioral programs for the individual could not make a bit of difference – and who often served up
humiliation to go along with the tragedy of circumstance.
One can also see these two contrasting visions of the American dream at work within the so called “Progressive” reform
movements at the turn of the century, especially in the field of education. On the one hand, there were conservative
technocratic managerial reforms, which stressed a vision of the American schools that mirrored the new industrial
management ethic, i.e. using a newly developed “science of education” to create and manage an
“educational/pedagogical machine:” an atomized approach to curricula and students along with “distinct roles and
rules” for each; “standardized curricula and procedures;” an administrative ideology of efficiency, rationality,” “precision,”
“continuity,” and “impartiality” (Tyack & Hansot 1982, 98, 97, 95).
This new science of education called for a technocratic elite of paid educational professionals – the “educational trust” –
who would push for a more centralized approach to schooling via state and federal governments. They sought to expand
federal financial and bureaucratic commitment to the Department of Education (created in 1867) and also expand state
departments of education so as to present a unified curricula that balanced the older forms of moral edification and
nationalistic indoctrination with new forms of technical/vocational training (Tyack & Hansot 1982). This educational trust
saw itself managing the school system towards noble ends; however, they were far from the radical ideal found in the
Declaration of Independence. These educational experts engineered, via a language of technical expertise and business
efficiency, what they called the “depoliticizing” of education. In essence this very political program sought to remove
schooling from its heretofore localized context so as to place it within a more structured, hierarchical order based on what
would the Frankfurt School theorists would call a “technocratic” rationality (Marcuse 1964). Tyack & Hansot (1982, 107-
108) summarize this ideology as “experts would run everything to everyone’s benefit:”
The goal of such structural changes in urban school governance was to turn controversial political issues – formerly decided by large numbers of
elected representatives on ward and central committees – into matters for administrative discretion to be decided by experts claiming
objectivity. This was, of course, not depoliticization at all; it was another form of politics, one in which authority rested not on representativeness
or participation but on expertise.
The professionalizing and depoliticizing of education represented a deeper collusion of Progressive administrators with the
economic interests, whereby older forms of American democracy based on republican virtues were being not so subtly
replaced by forms of aristocracy, oligarchy, crony-capitalism, and managerial expertise. As a predominant force
“reforming” schools, corporate efficiency experts helped refashion the guiding aims of education towards material
opportunity via the American dream of meritocracy. This conservative ideal of cutthroat competition only served to
reinforce established forms of authority, hierarchy, and gross inequality by focusing not upon the larger structures of an
unequal and exploitative class-based society, but instead focused on the improvement of the individual by making
him/her more marketable for the corporate workplace. In this environment, as Maxine Greene argues, the “dream of
wealth and upward mobility” had become “the American dream” (Greene 1988, 41).
In response to these disturbing reforms coupled with the corporate politics of oligarchy, there arose a group of radicals
who sought to challenge the injustice of the American system by re-theorizing and re-structuring the educational system so
as to encourage more open and critical forms of democratic participation and, thereby, help ferment larger socio-
political, “progressive” change. Educators like Ella Flagg Young and Margaret Haley, social reformers like Jane Adams and
Helen Keller, and perhaps above all the Philosopher, educational theorist, and social critic John Dewey helped worked
toward this end.
Dewey had an idealized notion of democracy, which as an ideal was a “possible” end that could be realized only through
the “hard stuff of the world of physical and social experience” (Dewey 1934/1962, 23, 48-49). Dewey believed that
democracy was to be actualized primarily as a means, lived and practiced through daily experience, which eventually,
through the development of already present human capacities, through a new pattern of human relationships, and
through cooperative action, would affect the ends of progressive social and political change (Fott 1998). However,
Dewey did not consider himself an educator and his move toward education was an extension of his grand philosophical
and political project: “if philosophy is ever to be an experimental science, the construction of a school is its starting point”
wherein one could “work out in the concrete, instead of merely in the head or on paper, a theory of the unity of
knowledge” (Menand 2001, 320). For Dewey, knowledge was an extension of action: we learn through doing; knowledge
should always be pragmatically related to the particular needs of any given socio-historical context. In essence, Dewey
argued, all theoretical and cultural constructs, like knowledge, belief, and common-sense, should be practical means of
promoting personal agency, which in turn was the foundation for Dewey’s conception of democracy as a free association
of individually motivated agents (Menand 2001).
However, as Dewey grew older and the technocratic elite further stratified the corporate governance of education, he
began to loose faith that “schools can be the main agency” of progressive socio-political change. He increasing realized
that his ideal vision did not readily fit within schools (or American society) as they actually existed nestled within the
“prevailing structures of power.” Within this ecology of inequality, schools would be “extremely difficult to transform into
agencies of democratic reform” (Schutz 2001, 7-8). But part of the problem also lay in Dewey’s failure to address socio-
political divisions of power based on conflicting class-based and ethnic-based interests. He tended to simplify or pass
over these central problematics in his expansive educational projects, which were always more focused on individual
agency, cooperation, and collective action. He failed to theorize, as Maxine Greene and others have pointed out, how
matters of human agency, education, and socio-political change are also matters of “power” as they involve contested
notions of “public space” and conflicting notions of the public good (Greene 1988). Dewey and his followers offered an
expansive vision of democratic education built within the tradition of the radical American Dream, but it seemed (as with
Jefferson) never to really touch the ground to take root. Philosophers like Maxine Greene (1988) and Amy Gutmann (1987),
educators and theorists like the Critical Pedagogues (Darder et al. 2003), and many others, have carried on Dewey’s
preoccupation with teaching a more equitable version of democracy based on the radical American dream found in the
Declaration of Independence, however, these educators and philosophers have never seemed to be able to enact the
widespread change they hoped for or promised would come. Why?
Conclusion
It took several major ruptures in the very fabric of American society in the later half of the 20th century to awaken a large
segment of the American people to realize the unfilled promise of the radical American dream found in the Declaration of
Independence. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act in 1965, and the larger Great Society programs, were all “progressive” legislative initiatives built out of the ferment of
grassroots protest and these legal enactments worked toward addressing fundamental inequalities based on race and
class (and somewhat on gender), however, the legacy of these governmental programs in terms of addressing inequality
and equal access to opportunity via education has been mixed (Patterson 2001; Katznelson 1989), and inequality in the U.
S. during the later half of the 21st century is growing (Harrington 1962, 1969, 1981; Kozol 1991; Bronfenbrenner et al. 1996;
Frank 2000; Ehrenreich 2001; Phillips 2002; Gosselin 2004; The Economist 2005). The Princeton Economist and New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman has called 21st century America a “new Gilded Age” and has stated outright that “the reality of
increasing inequality is not in doubt:” “inequality in the United States has arguably reached levels where it is
counterproductive” (Krugman 2002; see also Krugman 2003; Phillips 2002). In this context, a recent study of education in
relation to the American Dream (Hochschild & Scovronick 2003) found that there is still “contention over the goals of the
American dream:”
Sustained and serious disagreements over education policy can never be completely resolved because they spring from a fundamental
paradox at the heart of the American dream. Most Americans believe that everyone has the right to pursue success but that only some
deserve to win, based on their talent, effort, or ambition. The American dream is egalitarian at the starting point in the “race of life,” but not at
the end. That is not the paradox; it is simply an ideological choice. The paradox stems from the fact that the success of one generation
depends at least partly on the success of their parents or guardians. People who succeed get to keep the fruits of their labor and use them as
they see fit; if they buy a home in a place where the schools are better, or use their superior resources to make the schools in their
neighborhood better, their children will have a head start and other children will fall behind through no fault of their own. The paradox lies in
the fact that schools are supposed to equalize opportunities across generations and to create democratic citizens out of each generation, but
people naturally wish to give their own children an advantage in attaining wealth or power, and some can do it. When they do, everyone
does not start equally, politically or economically. This circle cannot be squared. (2)
Hochschild & Scovronick’s study concluded with the phrase “the ennobling vision the dream sometimes represents” and
acknowledged that without larger social and political reforms, “the ideology of the American dream will be just a cover
for systematic injustice” (201). This is an argument leftist theorists, educators, and activists have been making for almost
two centuries (for some recent articles on the subject see: Schutz 2001; Galen 2000; Brantlinger 2001; Giroux 2002;
Nicholson 2003; McLaren et al. 2004) and that even moderate neo-liberal organs like The Economist are beginning to
document (2005). Kevin Phillips (2002) has recently chronicled the disheartening statistics of contemporary America: 60%
of American households earn, on average and after taxes, less than $32,000 (and this does not take into account the
homeless, unemployed, and illegal immigrants), while the top 1% has seen a net income increase of 119% and accounts for
over 40% of Household Wealth (129, 123). Cal Jillson (2004) has also detailed many more current statistics and in the end
of his study he stated bluntly: “The United States has the greatest concentration of wealth, the greatest income inequality,
and the highest poverty rates in the advanced industrial world.” In the face of these disheartening trends, Ellen Brantlinger
(2001) has recently asked, “Will we continue to allow traditional elites in large institutions to control important discourse
and decisions, or will we take our democratic traditions seriously?”
This question has been asked since our country’s foundation. How long can the radical American Dream be deferred? The
Christian minister Martin Luther King Jr. (1963) argued, “Progress never roles in on wheels of inevitability.” At about the
same time, the atheist moral-philosopher Albert Camus (1956) argued that justice would come only through the
“perpetual struggle” of committed human beings who daily practiced the ends they preached. Both King (1963) and
Camus (1956; 1960) stated as a matter of fact that in an unjust society there is no neutral position – either you are living
and working to eradicate injustice and structural inequality or you are living and working to support such a system.
As the American democratic project crosses the threshold into unambiguous Imperial ambition, the ideology of the
radical American Dream remains deeply seated in the American consciousness and yet unresolved. As a sign of the times,
even the conservative American Dream of meritocracy is in deep trouble as inequality and class lines have become more
entrenched (The Economist, Jan 1, 2005). Given the priorities of the American one-party political system of centrist
opportunism, the ideals of equality, inalienable rights, life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness, government ruled by
consent of governed, laws for public good, and principles of freedom for all seem far, far away from public debate. The
consequences of a dream deferred is upon us and George S. Counts’ indictment of the U.S. educational system still has
currency for the country as a whole: Dare Americans build a new social order? Dare more Americans take responsibility for
their country, their communities, their schools, their families, and their own lives? As an ideal, the radical American Dream
is but a guiding beacon of possibility. It has yet to be realized because the concerted action of a large coalition of
Americans has yet to build a foundation for that vision. A century of piecemeal liberal reform driven and prodded by large
scale grassroots initiative has given this country great hope and expanded the frontiers of democracy beyond the narrow
interest of the founding fathers. But reaction has set in over the last three decades and the conservative American
Dream is giving way to the interests of managerial capitalism, evangelical fundamentalism, neo-liberal globalism, and
naked Imperialism. What will you do?
America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises – that will come true…
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumbling say them,
And faultily put them into practice…
Together we are building our land…
-Langston Hughes, “Freedom’s Plow”
Notes
1 The editor of this issue of The Federalist brings in a contrasting view to Madison’s use of the word "faction." Edmund Burke
used the term “party” in Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770), but Burke defined "party" in more neutral terms as "a
body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest, upon some particular principle in which
they are all agreed" (33). Under Burke’s definition, the un-propertied majority need not be a negative, self-serving and
destructive group of individuals out for their own good at the expense of a nation. One must be reminded, however, that
Burke was not one to support democratic causes and thus this contrast should be contextually qualified by his intended
usage, although it does give modern readers a glimpse of how Madison could have conceptualized his term if he had not
been bent on disparaging a truly democratic government.
2 One Common School proponent in Kansas wrote: “Americanism is Protestantism… Protestantism is Life, is Light, is
Civilization, is the spirit of the age. Education with all its adjuncts, is Protestantism. If fact, Protestantism is education itself”
(Tyack & Hansot 1982, 76).
3 A Republican candidate for governor in 1891 declared, “The public school is needed to Americanize our youth. It is the
great digestive apparatus by which the many nationalities in our state will become assimilated” (Tyack & Hansot 1982, 81).
4 In 1909, Ellwood P. Cubberley of Stanford University and a member of the “educational trust” proudly stated, “Each year
the child is coming to belong more to the state, and less and less to the parent” (Tyack & Hansot 1982, 103).
5 The top 1 percent of the U.S. population earned 33.9% of all personal income, while the bottom 20% earned only 8.3%
(Tyack & Hansot 1982, 109)
6 Educational theorists like Aaron Schutz worry that even Greene’s philosophy does not acknowledge “extensively
enough” the “affects of power and oppression” on an individual’s ability to participate in even the smallest of
communities” (14).
7 The neo-liberal English weekly The Economist has recently run several stories on the subject of the “American Dream” and
the ever-hardening class system within the United States (Jan 1, 2005, June 11, 2005, July 16, 2005).
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| Copyright 2006 Educational Studies Association Please contact publisher for permission to reprint or use this material in any form |
J. M. Beach, “Ideology of the American Dream: Two Competing Philosophies in
Education, 1776 - 2006,” Educational Studies: A Journal of the American
Educational Studies Association. 41.2. (2007): 148-64.
Education, 1776 - 2006,” Educational Studies: A Journal of the American
Educational Studies Association. 41.2. (2007): 148-64.
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J. M. Beach, "American Inequality, 1890 - 2006: A Brief Statistical History,
Unpublished Instructional Handout (2006).
Unpublished Instructional Handout (2006).
American Inequality, 1890 - 2006:
A Brief Statistical History
Edited & Compiled by J. M. Beach
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (1890)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. % of National Wealth # of Families Average Income per Family
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York, 1987): xix.
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (1977)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. % of National Wealth # of Families Average Income per Family
Kevin Phillips, Wealth & Democracy (New York, 2002)
1970s to 1990s
Average American salary rose from $32,522 to $35,864 (10% increase)
--salary adjusted for inflation--
Average C.E.O salary rose from 1.3 million to 37.5 million (2700% increase)
Paul Krugman, “The End of Middle-Class America,” New York Times Magazine (Oct 20, 2002)
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (1999)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. % of National Wealth # of Families Average Income per Family
Kevin Phillips, Wealth & Democracy (New York, 2002)
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (2006)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. approx # of people Average Income per Family
Jackson Dykman, “America by the Numbers,” Time (Oct 30, 2006)
In 1990s, Chance a child born rich will be rich as an adult: 22%
In 1990s, Chance a child born poor will be rich as an adult: 1%
Percent of poor families who remain poor: 47%
but if your white… 32%
but if your black… 63%
Alister Bull, “America’s Rags-To-Riches Dream an Illusion: Study,” Reuters (April 26, 2006)
Education & Average Income of People 25 years or older
Education (by 25 years) % of U.S. Pop. Average Income Average Student Debt
Stephen Ohlemacher, “College Degree Worth Extra $23,000/year,” Associated Press (Oct 26, 2006)
“Racing for Knowledge: International Comparisons,” Wilson Quarterly (Autumn 2006): 43.
Nathan Thornburgh, “Dropout Nation,” Time (April 17, 2006)
Tim Jones & Jodi S. Cohen, “College Students’ Financial Burden Is About to Get Worse,” LA Times (March 5, 2006): A23
“Out of the Mouths of Babes,” The Economist (Dec 24, 2005): 36.
1970s to 1990s
(Bronfenbrenner et. al., The State of Americans (New York, 1996)
• Richest 5% of Americans saw an average annual income increase of 1.16%
• Poorest 40% of Americans saw an average income decrease of -0.44%
1980s to 1990s
(Bronfenbrenner et. al., The State of Americans (New York, 1996)
• Richest 20% of Americans: 71% go to college and 40% graduate
• Poorest 20% of Americans: 40% go to college and 12% graduate
• High School drop out rate rich white: 2.5%
• High School drop out middle class Hispanic: 23.9%
• High School drop out poor black: 24.5%
• High School drop out poor Hispanic: 41.3%
• % of American children living in poverty (1970): 15%
• % of American children living in poverty (1985): 23%
• % of American children living in poverty (1994): 24%
• % of Black American children living in poverty (1994): 48%
• % of Hispanic American children living in poverty (1994): 42%
• In 1974 women made 85% the wage of a man
• In 1989 women made 85% the wage of a man
2005 – 2006
• + 102 billionaires in the world (793 billionaires total in the world)
• Combined wealth of all billionaires grew 18% ($2.6 trillion)
“102 Added to Billionaire Ranks,” LA Times (March 10, 2006): C3
• Ratio of average household income to household debt: 108.4%
(The average American household owes more money in debt than it actually earns in salaries)
Jessica Bennett, “Spend Cycle,” Newsweek Online (Aug 8, 2006)
A Brief Statistical History
Edited & Compiled by J. M. Beach
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (1890)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. % of National Wealth # of Families Average Income per Family
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York, 1987): xix.
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (1977)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. % of National Wealth # of Families Average Income per Family
Kevin Phillips, Wealth & Democracy (New York, 2002)
1970s to 1990s
Average American salary rose from $32,522 to $35,864 (10% increase)
--salary adjusted for inflation--
Average C.E.O salary rose from 1.3 million to 37.5 million (2700% increase)
Paul Krugman, “The End of Middle-Class America,” New York Times Magazine (Oct 20, 2002)
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (1999)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. % of National Wealth # of Families Average Income per Family
Kevin Phillips, Wealth & Democracy (New York, 2002)
Distribution of Wealth and Income in U.S.A. (2006)
Class Status % of U.S. Pop. approx # of people Average Income per Family
Jackson Dykman, “America by the Numbers,” Time (Oct 30, 2006)
In 1990s, Chance a child born rich will be rich as an adult: 22%
In 1990s, Chance a child born poor will be rich as an adult: 1%
Percent of poor families who remain poor: 47%
but if your white… 32%
but if your black… 63%
Alister Bull, “America’s Rags-To-Riches Dream an Illusion: Study,” Reuters (April 26, 2006)
Education & Average Income of People 25 years or older
Education (by 25 years) % of U.S. Pop. Average Income Average Student Debt
Stephen Ohlemacher, “College Degree Worth Extra $23,000/year,” Associated Press (Oct 26, 2006)
“Racing for Knowledge: International Comparisons,” Wilson Quarterly (Autumn 2006): 43.
Nathan Thornburgh, “Dropout Nation,” Time (April 17, 2006)
Tim Jones & Jodi S. Cohen, “College Students’ Financial Burden Is About to Get Worse,” LA Times (March 5, 2006): A23
“Out of the Mouths of Babes,” The Economist (Dec 24, 2005): 36.
1970s to 1990s
(Bronfenbrenner et. al., The State of Americans (New York, 1996)
• Richest 5% of Americans saw an average annual income increase of 1.16%
• Poorest 40% of Americans saw an average income decrease of -0.44%
1980s to 1990s
(Bronfenbrenner et. al., The State of Americans (New York, 1996)
• Richest 20% of Americans: 71% go to college and 40% graduate
• Poorest 20% of Americans: 40% go to college and 12% graduate
• High School drop out rate rich white: 2.5%
• High School drop out middle class Hispanic: 23.9%
• High School drop out poor black: 24.5%
• High School drop out poor Hispanic: 41.3%
• % of American children living in poverty (1970): 15%
• % of American children living in poverty (1985): 23%
• % of American children living in poverty (1994): 24%
• % of Black American children living in poverty (1994): 48%
• % of Hispanic American children living in poverty (1994): 42%
• In 1974 women made 85% the wage of a man
• In 1989 women made 85% the wage of a man
2005 – 2006
• + 102 billionaires in the world (793 billionaires total in the world)
• Combined wealth of all billionaires grew 18% ($2.6 trillion)
“102 Added to Billionaire Ranks,” LA Times (March 10, 2006): C3
• Ratio of average household income to household debt: 108.4%
(The average American household owes more money in debt than it actually earns in salaries)
Jessica Bennett, “Spend Cycle,” Newsweek Online (Aug 8, 2006)
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