CHAPTER 37
Daniel Fisher-Livne, Beatrice Gurwitz, Cecily Erin Hill, Stephen Kidd, and Scott Muir
Abstract
This chapter explores the evolution of state, local, and federal policies to promote engagement with the humanities in the United States from the Early Republic through the contemporary moment. It focuses particularly on policymakers’ efforts to support or influence educational institutions, libraries, museums, and historic sites. The authors argue that over time, humanities policy has largely focused on the value of the humanities to cultivating a prepared citizenry and forging shared narratives of the American experience, even as views of who comprised that citizenry and whose history and culture ought to be included in representations of the American experience have changed significantly.
Key Words: humanities, citizenship, K–12 education, higher education, museum, library, historic site, National Endowment for the Humanities
Since the Early Republic, policymakers have worked to foster engagement with history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of knowledge and inquiry that we would today call the humanities. This chapter explores the evolution of state, local, and federal policies to promote this engagement, largely through educational institutions, libraries, museums, and historic sites. While these institutions are not, and have never been, the only places to encounter the humanities, policy involvement with the humanities has generally revolved around supporting and influencing the educational and cultural institutions discussed here. Over time, the humanities have had a wide range of impacts on individuals and communities (e.g., fostering literacy, moral development, capacities for reflection and self-expression, etc.). Meanwhile, humanities policy has largely focused on the value of the humanities to cultivating a prepared citizenry and forging shared narratives of the American experience, even as views of who comprised that citizenry and whose history and culture ought to be included in representations of the American experience have changed significantly over time.
In working to ensure the success of the new Republic, policymakers promoted a liberal education grounded in the humanities as a crucible for forging citizens who could shape their own lives and participate in shaping their communities. In this way, education policy that fostered personal agency through the humanities became central to a vision of citizenship. Over time, even as the role of liberal education would be debated, who was given access to the humanities would become a marker of who was considered a full citizen. Following the Civil War, policymakers also cultivated national narratives about the American past both within educational institutions and through libraries, museums, and historic sites. Initially, the narratives they promoted were grounded in the cultural experience of the original Anglo-Protestant majority and assumptions about cultural and technological progress. While in many ways these narratives reinforced an exclusive sense of citizenship and belonging, more inclusive and pluralistic national narratives that better reflected the experiences of communities and the dynamics of American history were increasingly promoted, beginning in the 1930s. In the long run, liberal education and empirical research would help to advance this more pluralistic vision. The humanities became a force for agency among a wider range of individuals and communities as access to liberal education was extended, humanities scholarship expanded, and diverse communities achieved greater degrees of citizenship.
Creating a Citizenry through Liberal Education
After the Revolution, American leaders recognized the need to prepare the new country’s population for citizenship through education. Thomas Jefferson, for example, laid out a vision for educating the newly formed citizenry when he proposed a “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge” in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1779. Calling for a liberal education at the “common expense” for those who could not otherwise afford it, the bill contended that the most effective means of preventing tyranny was to “illuminate [ … ] the minds of the people at large” through the study of history, “the experience of other ages and other countries” (Jefferson, 1779). An educated citizenry, Jefferson contended, would create just and honest laws, contributing to the happiness and well-being of the nation at large.
While Jefferson’s bill did not pass, many leaders in the years following the Revolution envisioned schools that would foster within citizens the knowledge, skills, and moral capacities to participate in self-government and shape their lives. They believed that broad learning in math, science, literature, and history would empower individuals to imagine new economic and social possibilities (Neem, 2017, p. 10). The Northwest Ordinance provided a mechanism for funding schools through sales of public land, contending that “[r]eligion, morality, and knowledge, necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged” (Whealan, 1965, p. 11). Many state constitutions contained similar language articulating the need for a liberal education. Equally important to advocates was the notion that placing the responsibility for schools with local governments would cultivate a democratic culture as local communities came together to govern and support them. Local control, however, was sometimes at odds with the goal of universal liberal education. Schools in the period varied widely in the quality, type, and duration of schooling provided. In small towns and rural communities where most Americans lived, education reflected local cultures, teaching in a variety of languages and emphasizing a range of religious and cultural traditions (Kaestle, 1983). Additionally, some communities resisted imposing taxes for schools, arguing that children most needed common sense, a quality that was best cultivated through practical experience.
As new immigrants made the United States increasingly diverse, native-born Protestant reformers centered in New England promoted the establishment of state boards of education and increased public funding to create more uniform “common schools.” Proponents of the common school movement, such as Horace Mann of Massachusetts, believed a liberal education at public expense for youth from diverse backgrounds could instill a common culture that would promote social cohesion (Neem, 2017). At a time when religion was central to many local schools, the curriculum they proposed was non-sectarian and based in the liberal arts. Still, curricular materials commonly presented texts that were grounded in Protestantism and were hostile to religious traditions of more recent immigrants (Neem, 2017). Common school advocates were largely successful in their push for state boards of education, which they believed could prod communities into supporting schools that conformed to their vision, with most states establishing one before the Civil War (Kaestle, 1983). In the years after the Civil War, common school advocates championed larger schools that separated primary and secondary education, and that nurtured self-driven curiosity among students through a liberal arts curriculum that favored deep engagement with texts. This interactive pedagogy, advocates contended, would cultivate the capacities for self-making and democratic thought that they had long argued were crucial to civic participation (Neem, 2017).
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the combination of immigration and new compulsory attendance laws led to a rapid increase in school enrollments—more than 700 percent between 1880 and 1918 (Oakes, 2005, p. 19). This expansion raised questions of whether all students needed a liberal education or whether some were better suited to a vocational one. In 1892, the National Education Association convened a commission to make recommendations for standardizing secondary school education to better prepare students for higher education. Chaired by Harvard president Charles Eliot, who believed that all students had the ability to do intellectual work, the commission recommended that secondary schools should have four courses of study, all appropriate for college preparation and grounded in the humanities: classical, Latin-scientific, modern languages, and English. Under this configuration, Americans of all backgrounds would be provided with a liberal education befitting free and equal citizens (Oakes, 2005, pp. 17–18). Despite the committee’s views and those of common school advocates, state and local school systems embraced vocational education (Ravitch, 2000). The federal government also supported vocational education with the 1914 Smith-Lever Act and the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act. Decisions about who was best suited for a liberal education were shaped by racial, class, and ethnic biases (Oakes, 2005, p. 36), which were reinforced by the US Bureau of Education. Its 1917 report, for example, “[criticized] black educators and parents who wanted a precollegiate education” for black students, recommending instead that they be prepared for manual labor (Ravitch, 2000, pp. 108–109).
While the earliest advocates for public investment in education looked to primary education to foster baseline civic capacities for the population at large, they looked to higher education to equip a more select group with the skills and knowledge necessary to lead. Alongside his advocacy for primary education, Jefferson envisioned a public university in Virginia that would feature an updated liberal curriculum grounded in the humanities to equip citizens for their newfound freedoms. His vision for Virginia influenced Georgia and North Carolina to establish the first public universities. While the University of Georgia was chartered in 1785 to “advance the interests of literature” so as to “suitably form the minds and morals of citizens” (Charter, 1785), the University of North Carolina was the first to enroll students, offering a liberal arts curriculum in 1795. By the Civil War, more than two-thirds of states had established similar humanities-centered flagship public universities.
A push for greater access to higher education came with the Morrill Act of 1862, which incentivized states to establish universities by providing the proceeds from the sale of federal lands as financial support. In the context of population growth, territorial expansion, and increased global industrial and agricultural competition, this expansion of higher education aimed to foster leaders who could be civic and economic agents in their communities. The institutions would provide both a liberal arts education and instruction in “agriculture and the mechanic arts” (Roth, 2014, p. 116). The result was the establishment of comprehensive flagship public universities in the states that lacked them and technically oriented alternatives in states where flagships already existed. These technically oriented institutions also provided liberal education, reflecting the “insistence that liberal learning benefited the individual and society regardless of one’s occupation” (Roth, 2014, p. 116).
In a landscape largely segregated by race and gender, African Americans and women sought access to higher education, in general, and liberal arts curricula, in particular, as part of a quest for full citizenship. In an era that presumed motherhood, there was broad consensus that elevating women through liberal education would ensure the flourishing of the next generation. While the first public women’s colleges, founded in the 1880s, ostensibly provided a liberal arts education as part of training for this limited role, many students were encouraged to seek opportunities in a variety of professions (Solomon, 1986). And after the end of Reconstruction, a second Morrill Act, passed in 1890, established institutions for African Americans in segregated Southern states. Within this context, advocates such as George Washington Carver and W. E. B. DuBois debated the best curriculum for the public and private colleges for African Americans. While Carver prioritized professional training that would enable immediate economic uplift within the repressive post-Reconstruction regime, DuBois contended that the humanities would more fully empower African Americans to shatter the limitations placed on them (Roth, 2014, pp. 63–78).
Even with the gradual expansion of access to education in the nineteenth century, educational advocates and policymakers anticipated that many would not receive an extensive formal education. In this context, they urged public libraries to offer materials for self-education to community members of all ages. Beginning in the 1830s and 1840s, many common school advocates called for public support for libraries to encourage engagement with reading materials such as books on moral and political philosophy that would cultivate the “wisdom of the citizenry” (Carpenter, 2007, p. 306). New Hampshire passed a law in 1849 that allowed municipalities to levy taxes to support public libraries, and Massachusetts did the same in 1851 (Pawley & Robbins, 2013 p. 3). By 1880, 18 states had enacted laws enabling public financing for libraries. Still, the number of libraries remained limited as few communities pushed for their establishment (Carpenter, 2007, p. 311).
Libraries became increasingly common in American communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in large part due to Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy. Driven by his view that access to books enabled both self-education and democracy, Carnegie funded 1,679 public library buildings in the U.S. between 1890 and 1919 (Wiegand, 2009, p. 438). Carnegie motivated further private and public investment as well, by requiring that localities provide the land for the library and ongoing support for its operations. Many communities, inspired by the priorities of the Progressive Era, were eager to accept such terms. For progressive reformers, libraries were crucial to Americanizing immigrants, and they viewed “carefully selected” reading as essential to saving immigrant children from the streets (Pawley & Robbins, 2013, p. 4). The reforming spirit also extended to rural and non-immigrant communities: in Hagerstown, Maryland, community elites supported a county library that would serve the rural population to “raise the tone and character of a community” (Marcum, 1991, p. 93). Several of the first public libraries for African Americans, which also benefited from Carnegie funding, were promoted by an emerging group of black middle-class and professional groups, determined “to build community infrastructure for racial uplift” (Fultz, 2006, p. 340). But much like schools, unequal segregated libraries conveyed less than equal citizenship.
Fostering National Narratives
As leaders in the Early Republic advocated investments in public education to foster individual and societal thriving through the humanities, few policies were directed at museums and historic sites before the Civil War. Members of Congress generally believed that the federal role in fostering national identity and preserving cultural and historical artifacts should be limited. Over the next century, however, policymakers became increasingly involved in the collection of cultural artifacts and the development of museums and historic sites that presented narratives about American history and culture to the public. The federal government’s ongoing investment in research and discovery, along with the work of a growing number of independent research institutions and public and private universities, generated new national narratives that celebrated American progress within a hierarchy of civilizations and that privileged the Anglo-Protestant majority. Over time, academic researchers and policymakers developed and embraced alternative pluralistic narratives that saw a more diverse array of individuals and communities as active agents in American history and culture.
The federal government invested in research through expeditions to explore territories in the West and the Pacific during the first half of the nineteenth century. While these journeys sought transportation routes to promote trade and resources to exploit for economic gain, they also collected natural and cultural objects for scientific research. In practical terms, understanding the variety of cultures these explorers encountered could inform the government as it negotiated relationships with Native American and Pacific Island communities over land and other resources (Meringolo, 2012). With the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution, the federal government began to play a stronger role in supporting this research and discovery enterprise. In 1835, when James Smithson left a substantial bequest to the federal government “to establish an institution for the increase and diffusion of knowledge in Washington, D.C.,” Congress was forced to consider a stronger role in knowledge production and dissemination (Ewing, 2007, pp. 316–331). After years of debate, Congress ultimately established the Smithsonian Institution in 1846 under compromise legislation that, with the exception of a national university, included nearly all of the ideas that had been debated: a museum, a library, science laboratories, lecture halls, and art galleries (An Act to Establish the “Smithsonian Institution,” 1846). In the years after the Civil War, the Smithsonian played a central role as a repository and interpreter of cultural artifacts: researchers and curators mobilized these natural and cultural collections to create narratives of the United States’ place in the world and in the history of civilizations for public audiences (Kulik, 1989, pp. 7–12).
During the Smithsonian’s first decades, as the country became increasingly removed from the founding generation, divided over slavery, and more diverse, native-born elites increasingly sought to preserve historic sites as a way to assert the founding generation’s continuing relevance. In 1855, for example, women from Virginia formed the Mount Vernon Ladies Association to preserve George Washington’s plantation as a symbol of national unity, interpreting the site with their own selective memory of the South and its role in the nation’s founding. In the years after the Civil War, white Americans in the North and South built memorials and erected statues, often on battlefields managed by the US Department of War, interpreting the war in terms of bravery, sacrifice, and honor, while eschewing references to slavery and the experiences of African Americans (Kammen, 1993).
In the late nineteenth century, filiopietism toward the founders and the memorializing of the Civil War were joined with racist theories about civilizational hierarchies and cultural evolution to create new national narratives about progress. Drawing on the collections of natural and cultural artifacts assembled by the Smithsonian and other research institutions, a growing number of public exhibitions presented a sweeping view of human development focused on a narrative of progress from “primitive” to “advanced” industrial society. With the centennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1876, for example, the federally chartered (and partially federally funded) US Centennial Commission mounted a massive exhibition in Philadelphia that presented a narrative of progress based on American industrial achievement. At a time when the US Army was fighting battles in the West with Native American tribes, Native American cultures were characterized as a facet of natural history disconnected from contemporary US life. The American exhibits eventually became the centerpiece of the Smithsonian’s public exhibitions at its National Museum building, which opened in 1881 (Kulik, 1989, pp. 7–9).
Amid the rise of domestic tourism and increasing levels of immigration, local and state governments created historic sites and museums that would attract tourists and reinforce patriotic themes grounded in Anglo-American identity as the root of political and economic progress. A new federal law spurred local efforts. As prospectors increasingly explored the lands in the West, Congress passed the 1906 Antiquities Act at the urging of academic researchers, conservationists, and tourism advocates, authorizing the executive branch to protect cultural and natural assets by designating sites of natural and historic significance. The Act’s popularity with communities looking to promote tourism led Congress to create the National Park Service (NPS) to manage the growing number of properties, including Colonial National Monument in Yorktown and Jamestown, Virginia, and Native American sites such as Casa Grande Pueblo in Arizona (Meringolo, 2012). Then, in 1935, Congress passed the Historic Sites Act, which authorized a national survey of historic sites and created an advisory board to advise the federal government on which proposed sites to acquire and protect. Under the new act, with the assistance of the board, which included academic historians, the Park Service began to think more holistically about how the sites could individually and collectively create a narrative that would bring American history to life. To aid the advisory board, the NPS created Patterns in American History, a guide to historical significance that emphasized political and technological progress (Meringolo, 2012, p. 70). During this period, state and local efforts to document and manage historic sites mirrored the growth on the federal level, as state historical commissions commemorated historic sites through roadside historic marker programs and some local governments created historic districts during the first decades of the twentieth century (Page & Mason, 2004).
During the New Deal, a range of Works Progress Administration initiatives challenged this hierarchical view of culture by presenting a more pluralistic narrative about American history and regional and local cultures. These efforts were grounded in anthropological, historical, and folklore research emerging from universities. The leaders of the New Deal Federal Writers Project (FWP), in particular, had a pluralistic vision of national identity that was not a fixed cultural inheritance that other cultures could threaten, but rather something that arose from the experiences of diverse communities in the United States and was continually evolving. In 1935, the FWP launched the American Guide Series to document the histories and stories of diverse local and regional communities with the goal of introducing “America to Americans” through guidebooks for tourists. FWP officials appealed to local boosters by focusing on the economic benefits of tourism while enabling communities to celebrate regional and local identities and histories as part of a more complex national narrative (Hirsch, 2003, p. 4). This pluralistic approach treated African Americans, Native Americans, and ethnic immigrant groups as active agents in history, rather than representatives of cultures on an evolutionary rung subordinate to the central Anglo-Protestant one.
The Rise of the Contemporary Policy Landscape
After World War II, federal policies expanded access to liberal education and supported projects that increasingly advanced more pluralistic narratives. While policymakers were initially motivated to make these investments by the perceived civilizational struggle of the Cold War, over time, changes brought by the Civil Rights Movement and other social movements would supply more enduring motivations. During the 1950s and 1960s, landmark legislation bolstered the country’s educational and cultural infrastructure—and the humanities within that context—without exerting top-down management of educational and cultural institutions. This legislative framework fostered humanities research, preservation, and public engagement through grant programs to higher education institutions and the growing number of national and community-based museums, archives, and libraries.
As returning soldiers making use of the G.I. Bill of 1944 strained the capacity of college campuses, President Truman appointed a commission to evaluate the ability of higher education institutions to meet the challenges of postwar society. In its 1947 report, the Truman Commission on Higher Education called for increased federal investments to expand these institutions’ role in cultivating citizenship in a diverse, industrial society. To achieve this, they argued, higher education must cultivate knowledge of and respect for diverse cultures within the United States and throughout the world. Access needed to be extended to everyone who had the intellectual capacity to succeed in college, regardless of race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic background. With strikingly pluralistic language, the commission argued that a common curriculum grounded in the humanities and social sciences amidst people from diverse backgrounds would cultivate citizens capable of promoting the “intercultural cooperation” necessary for a more just and equitable democracy and a cooperative approach to global leadership (Higher Education for American Democracy, 1947, p. 2).
While the Commission made recommendations for federal policy, the expansion of higher education initially proceeded through increased investments at the state level. In a narrower, more instrumental approach, Congress favored legislation connected to defense and diplomacy, investing heavily in science research with the founding of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950 and in disciplines perceived as necessary for global competitiveness and engagement. The 1958 National Defense Education Act (NDEA) bolstered support for science, math, and foreign languages on college campuses and in elementary and secondary schools. The Mutual Education and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 established the Fulbright-Hays program to support historical and cultural research abroad.
Not until 1964 did the federal government—spurred by the Civil Rights Movement—expand its involvement with broader education policy. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and national origin, finally banning discrimination in college admissions in all states. The following year, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) promoted equitable educational access by funding programs for low-income populations, and the Higher Education Act (HEA) established a system of financial aid that made college affordable to a wider range of students. While these policies largely reinforced liberal education, they did not offer funding for research and education in specific disciplines. With the NSF and the NDEA, the vast majority of federal research funding continued to fund the sciences.
As this funding flowed into research universities, in 1963 the American Council of Learned Societies, the Council of Graduate Schools, and the Phi Beta Kappa Society convened a commission to assess the state of the humanities. The commission found funding disparities particularly concerning, given the importance of the humanities in cultivating wisdom among the citizenry and the role of scholars in introducing Americans to “enduring values as justice, freedom, virtue, beauty and truth” (Commission on the Humanities, 1964, p. 4). Responding to the commission report and parallel efforts of arts advocates, Congress passed the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act—the first federal legislation that directly supported the arts and humanities by establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
In its first years, the NEH was scholarly in its orientation, funding research, publications, and professional development for humanities teachers. The NEH’s strongest supporters in Congress quickly pushed the agency to engage broader audiences with state-based programs and more funding to museums, historic sites, and other institutions (Zainaldin, 2013). By 1980, between funds to the state councils and direct grants, about 50 percent of NEH funds went to public programs (Miller, 1984). Alongside its embrace of publicly oriented work, the NEH worked to ensure that the research and educational programs it funded captured the experience of diverse range of Americans. This shift grew largely out of the rise of social movements and the growth of social history in the academy, though Congress was supportive of the widening scope as well (Miller, 1984). With the NEH’s mandate that scholarly input shape NEH-funded museum exhibitions and interpretations of historic sites, shifts in the academy fostered more diverse narratives in publicly oriented institutions (Kulik, 1989, p. 27).
The NEH was not alone in this trajectory. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Smithsonian brought contemporary social history scholarship into its exhibitions to create more pluralistic narratives and invited diverse communities to present their living cultural traditions in Washington. Congress called on additional agencies to encourage engagement with more diverse histories and cultures. Amendments to ESEA in 1974 funded ethnic heritage centers that emphasized local culture in classroom instruction, acknowledging the histories and contributions of a broader range of Americans than had traditionally been integrated into the curriculum. The 1970s reauthorizations of the 1964 Library Services and Construction Act ensured that a wider range of Americans had access to libraries and materials that resonate with their cultural identities by calling for programs and materials to better serve disabled patrons, incarcerated citizens, Native Americans, and poor rural and urban areas (Fry, 1975; Fuller, 1994).
As the postwar policy landscape took shape, some lawmakers opposed the federal government’s growing involvement in education and culture. Beginning in the 1980s, this opposition led to multiple efforts to defund humanities programs. Nonetheless, these programs have garnered enough support to survive, in large part due to their efforts to reach an ever broader group of Americans. Support for the language and area studies programs established under NDEA (and now authorized under Title VI of the Higher Education Act) wavered as the exigencies of the Cold War subsided, but received a boost after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Still, as immediate threats seem to recede, cuts have followed, including a 30 percent cut from the Obama administration in 2010 and a call to eliminate the programs from the Trump administration. The programs have survived largely because they have been reconceptualized to train a broader citizenry for productive global engagement, rather than a select group of experts for national security (Wiley, 2001).
The NEH and the NEA have been more frequent targets. In 1981, the Reagan administration proposed drastic cuts to both agencies. While Reagan was only able to implement smaller cuts, members of Congress have occasionally called for either deep cuts or elimination of the agencies. The Trump administration, for its part, called for the shutdown of the agency in each of its budget requests, though Congress ultimately increased funding for the agency each year. One claim animating attacks on the NEH is that it allows government bureaucrats to determine which grants are funded. This argument has been undermined by the actual grant-making structure, which is rooted in peer review and oversight by a presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed National Humanities Council and a similarly appointed and confirmed chairman. State humanities councils further ensure that decisions for a growing portion of NEH funds are made outside of Washington. Detractors also claim that government funding crowds out private funds, which would be adequate to support the programs that public audiences enjoy. But as Congress has boosted funding for the NEH in recent years, it has commended the agency’s role in communities that are underserved by private funding: praising the NEH for leveraging private funding, fostering civic dialogue across differences, revitalizing cultural heritage, and ensuring that the stories of underserved communities are part of a complex and multifaceted national narrative.
Conclusion
Across all the arenas in which the humanities have thrived in American life, there has been a progressive, though uneven and at times slow, movement toward greater inclusion and participation since the Early Republic. The founding generation looked to an education grounded in the humanities to cultivate the capacities of citizenship and leadership. In schools, libraries, colleges, and universities, they envisioned an education that would give agency to individuals to make their own lives and to help to shape their communities. Following the Civil War, humanities research, discovery, and public engagement also came to play central roles in America’s self-fashioning at new museums and historic sites. Like debates over education and citizenship, this too was entangled in questions of access, inclusion, and, indeed, racism, as public representations of the American experience privileged narratives of progress that excluded the experiences of many. These narratives have shifted progressively with broader trends over the last century and through more recent investments in the humanities: in higher education, at the NEH, the Smithsonian museums, and historic sites across the country. This process continues every day, as state, local, and federal policies empower new generations and communities to flourish through the humanities.
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