ABSTRACT
Despite the awkward relationship between naturalistic empiricism and religion, there was just enough cordiality to allow naturalism to thrive and form a foundation whereupon the educational philosophies of idealism and realism could build. Educational theory began to cooperate with philosophy and to form a sort of compact replacing the earlier competition or hostility between the two that in the end produced systematic philosophies of education. Likely because of the close relationship philosophical idealism had with religion and the fact that idealism had been planted in the intellectual soil of America by pastors and pedagogues, idealism was the first of the academic-historic philosophies to make overtures to education. Without ever being genuine philosophies of education, progressive education and essentialism began to compete as drivers of the American educational enterprise. Meanwhile idealists concentrated upon mental development and seemed indifferent to the fact that students came to school with bodies as well as minds.
