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The Problem of the Past in the Modern University: Catholics and Classicists, 1860-1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Extract

Between 1860 and 1900 Americans witnessed a revolution that ushered in a new type of university and a new academic order. During those years, the increasingly nonsectarian, scientific, and utilitarian university supplanted the denominationally affiliated liberal arts college as America's preeminent institution of higher learning. Many of the architects of this new university, whose ranks included university presidents, faculty, and civic leaders, christened it a “modern” institution of higher education, wrapping their academic innovations in the rhetoric of progress. Conversely, they often depicted their opponents and those associated with older collegiate traditions as academic relics wedded to retrograde practices and enamored of past ages. The popularity of the idea of progress in the late nineteenth century and its formative role in the rise of the modern university are well known. Less clear is the fate of representatives and elements of the older academic order during this period. If indeed the universities of the late nineteenth century were “modern” and “progressive,” what was to be the fate of the past—and educators and scholars committed to the wisdom of the past—within those institutions and higher education more generally?

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Copyright © 2002 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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