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This study investigated the efforts to find public support for religious education. A history of education in the United States prior to 1800 is presented to show that the majority of the schools were denominational, whereas at the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of schools were public, and, their supporters claimed, secular. The second part of the study investigated the efforts in the early part of the 19th century to establish publicly supported religious schools. As a consequence of the conflict between those who were in agreement for publicly financed denominational schools and those who argued for nonsectarian public schools, the "godless" public school gradually emerged, as explored in the third section. The last part analyzes efforts (such as the Poughkeepsie Plan and the Savannah Plan) to establish religious public schools. As the relationship between religion and public schools is considered in the present, it is important to ask what can be learned from the past. References contain 17 primary sources, 16 court decisions, and 46 secondary sources. (JMD)

The history section of the Proceedings contains the following 13 papers: "Telling the Untold Story: An Examination of the History of the Religious Press in America" (Phyllis E. Alsdurf); "Dusting with a Ballot: The Portrayal of Women in the Milwaukee Leader" (Jon Bekken); "The Struggle to Control Motion Picture Advertising, 1921 to 1968" (Sharon E. Blum); "The Shark-Infested Waters off Cape Canaveral: An Oral History of the Early Media Coverage of Project Mercury" (Ginger Rudeseal Carter); "Woman as Citizen: An Ideological Analysis of Three Women's Publications, 1900-1910" (Janet M. Cramer); "Don Bolles: News Martyr of the 1970s, Enigma of the 1990s" (Kenneth C. Killebrew); "'The Courage to Call Things by their Right Names': Fanny Fern, Feminine Sympathy, and Feminist Journalism in the Nineteenth-Century American Popular Press" (Carolyn Kitch); "The Emergence of Religion Pages in Three Ohio Dailies: 1865-98" (Debra L. Mason); "'Who Was 'Shadow'?' The Computer Knows: Using Grammar-Program Statistics in Content Analyses Finally May Solve This Civil War Riddle and Other Writing Mysteries" (Barbara G. Ellis and Steven J. Dick); "The Caning of James Gordon Bennett, the Penny Press, and the Primordial Soup of Modern American Journalism" (David T. Z. Mindich); "The First College Journalism Students: Answering Robert E. Lee's Offer of a Higher Education" (Joseph A. Mirando); "'Books are Weapons': Books in Twentieth-Century Presidential Campaigns" (Priscilla Coit Murphy); and "The Reader as Consumer: Curtis Publishing Company and the Definition of Audience, 1910-1930" (Douglas B. Ward). (CR)

Scholars of writing, language, and culture will find a rich fund of research material in 19th-century obituaries which convey extensive details of the deceased's life through an elegant language reminiscent of an oral culture. In contrast to today's newspaper obituaries, which are business-like, tight-lipped, and entirely devoid of any details or feelings, the obituaries of the 19th-century are elevated in a poetic style overflowing with drama, emotion, and adventure. Extensive excerpts from these obituaries show how they unashamedly expressed grief and the shock of loss; unlike today, the personal details of the deceased's last moments are not spared. One excerpt, for instance, explains how Miss Mattie Ayers threw herself into the Saranac River at Moffitsville (New York), after outrunning her brother and a friend on her way to a cliff. After her rescue, she "gave a few faint gasps and died." In addition to grisly details, all people, regardless of how saintly or naughty, merited a notice of their unique experiences, important contributions, or personal characteristics. These obituaries also depict a pre-technological society in which 60 was a ripe old age and people much younger died of diseases now regarded as extinct, such as typhoid, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. Remnants of an oral cultural tradition are evident in the use of stock phrases and references to word-of-mouth information. (TB)

In the United States of the 19th century, domesticity was the dominant mode by means of which women were urged to think of their experience. Accordingly, domestic advice scrapbooks were favored by many women of the period--scrapbooks which were composed from handwritten fragments and scraps of newspapers and magazines clipped for personal but often indeterminate reasons and glued onto any available bound pages. The processes of selection and arrangement mark these scrapbooks as a form of personal writing that interacts with, rather than insignificantly repeats, ideologies of behavior and experience. Domestic advice scrapbooks represent participation in the tendencies of the dominant culture, but potentially more than passive acceptance of it. Instructed by professionally published manuals about what their daily lives should look like, women were urged to use this socially mediated experience as a means to refine their knowledge of domestic practices. A testimonial from a 1905 "Harper's Bazaar" suggests the significance of advice scrapbooks for literacy studies; namely, the woman must learn, she cannot merely repeat, and the scrapbook assists this process. Examples of scrapbooks in the Winterthur Library encompass a wide range of materials--recipes, historical clippings, poems, advertisements, calling cards, etc. The idiosyncratic shapes of domestic advice scrapbooks invite contemporary browsers to re-imagine how knowledge is transmitted within instructional scenes, and to imagine that literate expression--that is, an engagement with the forces that shape experience--need not appear in essay form and need not be composed in group settings. (NKA)

A course taught at St. Augustine's College uses "A Voice from the South" (1893) by Anna J. Cooper (a collection of essays representing women as being bold, in-charge decision makers) as an example of how "Feminism across the Disciplines" is expressed. These essays, as well as works of a number of other writers, can be used in developing interdisciplinary writing assignments. Opportunities for vocabulary building, comparing a 19th century man's curriculum with a 19th century woman's curriculum, and comparing Cooper's ideas with those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in an excerpt from "The Communist Manifesto" are all examples of interdisciplinary assignments which enable students to more openly participate in a liberal arts education. (RS)

Literary societies, while dying or already defunct in Eastern U.S. schools, still played significant roles in 19th-century frontier colleges like Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, and it is the thesis of the paper that a systematic investigation of the document left by these societies, although largely neglected by historians, will have important implications for the understanding of 19th century rhetoric and composition instruction. Involving most of the students at any one college, the societies (of which the first is usually thought to be the Spy Club at Harvard, founded in 1719) usually met once a week for the purpose of orations, declamations, essays, debates, parliamentary practice, and the edition of a student paper. At Butler, belonging to a literary society was an integral part of being a student. Three typical society activities--literary exercises, the critic's report, and the literary paper--demonstrate that societies complemented regular rhetorical education and offered students the opportunity of individual growth, peer support, and training for public life. The progress 19th-century women made toward equality in higher education can often be measured by their involvement in literary societies. At Butler, unlike other universities at the time, women were able to speak in class, read their own essays, and perform on a public platform. However, no opportunity to practice for public occasions existed until the women formed their own literary society. Generally said to have been in decline, nineteenth-century rhetoric emerges from a study of literary societies as central to education and society. (RS)

While concerns over literacy are common in contemporary times, similar concerns have been raised in other historical periods. Despite earlier predictions of American mastery of English, the Harvard Reports of the 1890s reflected anxiety over literacy among freshman college students from even "the best families in point of culture and breeding, and from the best schools." In addressing who was responsible for the problem, language critics and educators of the era engaged not so much in soul searching as in blame shifting. Preparatory schools took the brunt of the attacks. The students themselves were criticized for spending too much time in the lower levels of education. Other targets included "the home, the very cheap newspaper, the street" and even advertising, which was labeled an "acknowledged evil" and a "perversion of talent." The colleges themselves and their entrance examinations were attacked by critics. It is hoped that present-day calls for educational reform will seek out effective solutions and not just a revival of educational methods that do not work. (Fifty-eight references are attached.) (SG)

The History Division section of the proceedings contains the following 13 papers: "William G. Brownlow and The Knoxville 'Whig': A Career of Personal Journalism or Partisan Press?" (Alisa White Coleman); "Covering the Century: How Four New York Dailies Reported the End of the 19th Century" (Randall S. Sumpter); "Science, Journalism and the Construction of News: How Print Media Framed the 1918 Influenza Pandemic" (Meg Spratt); "The Klan and Press in Atlanta, 1919-1921: A Tale of Public Relations and Newspaper Opposition" (Hanna E. Norton and Karen S. Miller); "The Confederate Press Association: A Revolutionary Experience in Southern Journalism?" (Ford Risley); "Selling the National Pastime: The Start of Major League Baseball Public Relations" (Bill Anderson); "Czars, Presidents, Philosophers, and Miscegenation: The Cultural Power of Early Motion Pictures" (Elaine Walls Reed); "'Pounding Brass' for the Associated Press: A Press Telegrapher Recalls His Craft" (J. Steven Smethers); "American Press Coverage of Sociologist Herbert Spencer During His 1882 Visit to America" (Jack Breslin); "Strange Bedfellows, or a Marriage Made in Heaven? Advertising, the Federal Government, and the Second World War" (Inger L. Stole); "The U.S. Military and War Correspondents in World War II: Roles and Relationships" (Alan Armitage); "The Creation of the 'Free' Press in Japanese American Internment Camps: The War Relocation Authority's Planning and Making of the Camp Newspaper Policy" (Takeya Mizuno); and "Chicago Newspaper Theater Critics of the Early 20th Century: Mediating Ibsen, the Syndicate and the Little Theaters" (Scott Fosdick). (RS)