ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the emergence of white demand for formal schooling as a race and class dimension of power dynamics among settlers. Topics explored include missionary work, charity schooling, orphanages, and town and rural private schools. It shows how that desire for both affinity and distinction contributed to a racialized education demand among whites. Nonelite white demand for formal schooling grew during the mid-eighteenth century. The number and complexity of schooling initiatives expanded during the middle third of the eighteenth century. When this education interest came from middling families, it often featured a competitive emulation of wealthy whites. But among elite whites, participation in the construction and operation of schooling initiatives for poorer whites served social and political interests. The South Carolina Regulator rebellion’s demand for schools epitomized the growing linkage of learning and power in colonial society.
