ABSTRACT
The social and economic themes in the formation of the American schools responded to a structural reorganization of material life and a new collective consciousness associated with the Progressive Era. The creation of the new school subjects focused the activities of schooling on bourgeois ideologies of individualism, and responded to cultural and economic issues of the immigrations from Eastern and Southern Europe. The history of school content is an intersection with social, cultural, political and economic interests that underlie the transformations and strains in American institutions. The curriculum of American schools emerges in a period when the United States was reasserting a national confidence and identity through the social, political and educational reforms of the Progressive Era. The faith in a science of schooling was part of a discourse related to the professionalization occurring in the social and economic structures of American society.
