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Southern Education in Transition: William Waugh Smith, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Methodist Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert A. Hohner
Robert A. Hohner*
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Extract

The South has long represented a distinct and enduring subculture in American society. Its uniqueness stems in part from the overwhelming strength of evangelical Protestantism in the region, a monolithic religious presence unmatched elsewhere in the United States, save in Utah. At the turn of the twentieth century, the pervasive influence of the Methodist and Baptist denominations was even more pronounced than it is today. The intense religiosity of southern society and culture contributed significantly to the failure of southern higher education to conform to the pattern of change characteristic of other regions after the Civil War. Elsewhere, secular ideals of utility and research displaced the older educational values of piety and mental discipline and outdistanced the rival conception of liberal culture, and universities eclipsed colleges in importance. In contrast, colleges continued to dominate education in the South, and the higher learning there adhered to a different philosophy, liberal Christian education, a distinctive amalgam which remained committed to the central importance of religious and moral principles.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 181 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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