Bailyn, Bernard. Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1960.

Summary
The history of American Education has “suffered at the hands of specialists who, with the development of public education at heart sought historical arguments to strengthen their ‘cause.’” Moreover, the school has been interpreted in a vacuum, separate from society. Bailyn’s essay places the development of educationin the context of Puritanism, philanthropy, race relations, and the growth of sectarianism'''. ''' For example: The Family, Community, and the Church were the key instruments of education (traditions, behavior, and traditions) in England. The early colonial days, however, transformed this and required the creation of a more formalized education to control and maintain the next generations being reared in a new environment. Schools also functioned to convert and control native populations. Bailyn writes: In a heterogenous society, with competing and conflicting groups (denominational and natives), "education became an instrument, deliberately used, in which dominant groups sought to recreate an ideal unity and miniroies struggled to retain their groups identity." (100) The aim of the essays was to entice a new generation of scholars into a field that suffered from neglect and ill-founded conclusions.

Example: The various education acts in Massachusetts (Laws of 1642 and 1647) were attempts to protect against the frontier, the disruption of familiar English patterns, and the breakup of the Elizabethan familiy.

See also: Lawrence Cremin, Craig Steve Wilder, Mary Kelley