UC Riverside

This study looks at the history of California through the prism of education. Control of California changed hands several times during the long nineteenth century, and each change brought about turbulence and social unrest. Schools often proved to be the battlegrounds on which existing cultures clashed with incoming power structures. This study examines these different cultures and their attitudes toward educating the masses, beginning with the different California Indian tribes and ending with California as a U.S. state. In each case, education that was provided by the ruling powers was meant to serve those powers. Consent of the governed was preferable but not necessary. Especially under the United States, educators had to walk a fine line between the rights of parents and the needs of the state. Catholics resisted the Protestant ethos of American common schools. Democrats resisted public schools because they became the postwar agenda of the Republican Party. White parents resisted sending their sons and daughters to school with children of color. Farmers and other manual laborers resisted supporting high schools which their working-class children would never attend. Compulsory school laws were passed and ignored. Each of these struggles shaped the public school systems that finally became universal among U.S. states in the twentieth century.