INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL TRENDS

1
INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL TRENDS

• CHAPTER 19 (510-529)

2
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

• Between 1878 and 1898 the number of colleges rose
  from 350 to 500 while the student population
  tripled still less than 2 went
• Colleges also changed their curriculum
• Morrill Acts of 1862 grants land for the
  training of agricultural and mechanical arts
• Wealthy people donated, instructors developed new
  courses, specialties like medicine, law, business
  and journalism increased in number

3
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

• Harvard Americas oldest and most prestigious
  college
• Charles W. Eliot invented the elective system
• Students could borrow from the library
• Brought in new professors with new ideas

4
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

• Johns Hopkins the first American research
  college
• Sought freedom of inquiry
• Paid very well for professors
• Encourages other schools like it
• Other schools were started like the University of
  Chicago, Clark University, Illinois, Michigan
  State, Ohio State, University of Michigan,
  Stanford University

5
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

• As colleges grew bigger, they also grew more
  complicated
• As student populations grew larger, their needs
  changed
• Athletics, fraternities, and other social events
  became important 50,000 people attended the
  Harvard-Yale football game in 1893!
• Colleges began to reflect the good and bad of
  American society

6
REVOLUTIONS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

• Scholars began addressing practical issues such
  as slums, trusts, and other social problems
• Social scientists began applying the scientific
  method to their own work
• Breakthroughs and new theories were being
  developed in economics, sociology, anthropology,
  political science
• Attitudes began to change about many things
• Darwinism, or evolution, permeated many areas

7
PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION

• It was no longer facts and a birch rod but
  professional training, enthusiasm, and
  imagination were also required to properly
  educate the youth
• John Dewey The School and Society
• Education was the method of social reform
• The school had to fill the gap in education
• Education should center on the child

8
(No Transcript)
9
LAW AND HISTORY

• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The Common Law
• Judges should not limit themselves to precedent
  but should be feel the necessities of the time
• Laws should evolve as conditions change
• He continually stressed the rights of the people

10
(No Transcript)
11
LAW AND HISTORY

• Frederick Jackson Turner The Significance of
  the Frontier in American History (1893)
• The frontier experience created America
• Through each wave of expansion the people,
  institutions and culture changed
• The isolation of the frontier accounts for
  American individualism and democratic tendencies

12
(No Transcript)
13
REALISM IN LITERATURE

• The Romantic period in American literature was
  coming to an end Poe, Hawthorne, and Thoreau
  were dead
• The realities of the Civil War were difficult to
  ignore, as well as the realities of the new
  social issues brought about by industrialization,
  evolution, and science
• Novelists sought to write about these things in a
  meaningful way

14
MARK TWAIN

• He was a printer, river boat pilot in the
  Mississippi, gold prospector in Nevada,
  journalist, writer, speculator, and master wit
• The Innocents Abroad (1869)
• The Gilded Age (1873)
• Tom Sawyer (1876)
• Huckleberry Finn (1884)
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court
  (1889)

15
(No Transcript)
16
REALISM IN ART

• As with writers, styles changed in light of
  changes in society
• Thomas Eakins The Gross Clinic (1875)
• Winslow Homer The Fox Hunt (1893)
• James Whistler Whistlers Mother (1871)
• Mary Cassatt Children Playing on the Beach
  (1884)

17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
THE PRAGMATIC APPROACH

• Science and the Bible seemed at odds -
• Absolutes seemed to be unreasonable -
• Charles S. Pierce
• Pragmatism an element of indeterminacy,
  spontaneity, or absolute chance in nature
• Free will
• Pragmatism revived the optimism missing since
  the Civil War, but it also brought a great deal
  of uncertainty

22
THE KNOWLEDGE REVOLUTION

• In an ever growing, ever expanding nation,
  knowledge came to be regarded and extremely
  important no matter which kind
• Libraries spread
• Newspapers grew
• Joseph Pulitzer New York World
• William Randolph Hearst New York Journal
• The telegraph also fed this hunger for knowledge

23
THE KNOWLEDGE REVOLUTION

• Magazine sales skyrocketed
• 1865 700 magazines
• 1900 5000 magazines
• Atlantic Monthly, Harpers serious journals
• Frank Leslies Jolly Joker current events
• Ladies Home Journal one of many new
  mass-marketed magazines with practical articles
  and mass appeal to rich and poor