Essay on The Refinement of Reform and Culture

Submitted By edamico0001
Words: 706
Pages: 3

The Refinement of Reform and Culture

There were many reform movements in the first half of the 19th century to push America towards a more democratic society. These reform movements advanced many aspects of American society, government, economy, and the livelihood of the citizens. These reforms include religious movements, women’s rights movements, and movements to improve education all were a step toward a more democratic society. Although many of them failed at the time such as women’s rights movements others flourished with dramatic affect on the betterment of America such as movements to improve education and religion.

Education had been put aside for many years, mostly for the poor families, of the U.S. Education need to be accessible to the masses even to poor land owners and frontier families. The educated men of the country, mostly the government, was getting somewhat frustrated because people picked a strong, pretty face, good morale background, candidates for their presidents. The problem was the most of the American people only saw the mask not the man and choose accordingly. Horace Mann became the father of education with honorable mention to Noah Webster for his dictionary. Free public schooling became accessible to poor land owners and frontier families. At first the teachers were priest because most of the universities and first schools were founded to study god and the spirit of him within the common man. Now they were teaching literature, math, and sciences this started to get the brains of our young Americans wondering. Although Men became dominate, as always, at first in this profession but they soon realized that women took better care of the children.

Women in the society of the nineteenth century were looking to break the convention of the “stay at home mother”. There want for more freedom, rights, and independency show itself in the many movements that women were at the forefront of. The abolition of slavery, improvements in education for everyone, and asylum reform became some of their top interests. This was a way to get out of the house, get into the public scene, and to improve the world there husbands lived and worked. Many of them were successful in doing so such as Elizabeth Clay Stanton who was at the forefront in advancing women’s rights. The problem was that many moments that they were behind soon became law except for their own rights. Slavery was abolished after the Civil War and education had become accessible to everyone. The women had spent too much time funding and backing other reforms that they forgot about themselves as women often do.

With the second Great Awakening at the forefront of the first half of the 19th century many religious denominations sprang up