During the nineteenth century, social reformers took hold of an already existing institution-the school-and sought to make it compulsory. In the process, they supplanted parents and domestic life-the home-as the primary educational force for children. As education was taken out of the home, American classrooms were at the same time remade into a particular kind of home life-one based upon a sentimentalized maternity, where love can always triumph over the "public" and "masculine" forces of competition, merit, and hierarchy. And so love entered into the discourse of teaching ... In this model,...

During the nineteenth century, social reformers took hold of an already existing institution-the school-and sought to make it compulsory. In the process, they supplanted parents and domestic life-the home-as the primary educational force for children. As education was taken out of the home, American classrooms were at the same time remade into a particular kind of home life-one based upon a sentimentalized maternity, where love can always triumph over the "public" and "masculine" forces of competition, merit, and hierarchy. And so love entered into the discourse of teaching ... In this model,...