1. Process of writing history Historians interpretations

2. What is a progressive?  Libertarian: gov’t should stay out of economic life; gov’t should stay out of private life (don’t regulate business, legalize drugs )  Conservative: gov’t should stay out of economic life; intervene in private life (don’t regulate business, outlaw drugs)  Liberal: gov’t should regulate economic life; gov’t should stay out of private life (regulate business, legalize durgs)  Progressive: gov’t should regulate economic life; intervene in private life (regulate business, outlaw drugs)

3. Historiography of the Progressive Era  Was the Progressive Era Elitist or Democratic? Social justice or social efficiency?  Progressive School (Charles Beard): movement challenged big business and the privileged classes. Wanted to restore government to the people, to abolish special privilege and ensure equal opportunity for all, and to promote social justice through legislation and sound administration

4. Historiography of the Progressive Era  Consensus School (Hofstadter). Driven by status anxiety. Old middle class, Anglo-Saxon Protestant families were being replaced by nouveau-riche plutocracy, so they launched a moral crusade to resuscitate older Protestant and individualistic values

5. Historiography of the Progressive Era  Organizational School (Wiebe). Search for order. New middle class of professionals who imposed order onto a rapidly changing world through scientific means and social efficiency. Movement from face-to-face “island communities” to bureaucratic, technical corporate world. 

6. Historiography of Progressive Era  New Left School (Kolko). The Triumph of Conservatism. PE created a synthesis of business and government that equated the general welfare with the health of businesses. The PE was “characterized by a paucity of alternatives to the status quo, a vacuum that permitted political capitalism to determine the ground rules for American civilization in the twentieth century.”

7. Was the Progressive Era good or bad for America? Bringing Historiography to Middle School Level  Democratic or Elitist?  Social Justice or Social Efficiency?  Whose interest did reformers serve? Example: Mandatory schooling

8. Democratic or Elitist? Professionalization of education - Americanization of immigrant children - IQ testing, sorting of students into academic and vocational tracks - Centralization of schools into larger districts, introduction of elected school boards and state bureaucracy - Movement from academic subjects to expanded, relevant curriculum (i.e. history to social studies)

9. Democratic or Elitist? US Imperialism “civilizing the savage” US gains control of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, inhabitants “civilized”“civilized” Native Americans forced off of reservations and “civilized” in boarding schoolsboarding schools Plessy vs. Furgeson (1896) legalizes segregation W.E.B. Du Bois calls for “Talented Tenth” to challenge B.T. Washington’s vocational curriculum