Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880

Rating:
Summary: Contextualizing the Curriculum
Review: In this remarkable treatise the author seeks to establish a comprehensive historical context for the development of Sunday school as an institution in the nineteenth century. Rather than explicitly stating her purpose, Boylan tells us what she is not intending to accomplish; namely, she does not seek to offer a mere chronicle or to spin the self-congratulatory tales sometimes offered by insiders. Her book attempts to provide a social history of Sunday school from 1790-1880. Like her other work, SUNDAY SCHOOL "analyze[s] the place of religiously inspired voluntary organizations, especially those founded and run by women, in American society(from Boylan's CV, available on the web).

Boylan's central argument is that the Sunday school of nineteenth century America did not evolve in a vacuous void, but was profoundly shaped by the cultural mores and ethos of the day. By advancing this thesis, she implicitly argues that American Sunday schools are, in a host of ways, decidedly different than those across the Atlantic. This can be seen the preference for efficiency and practicality (90), the wide range of denominational expression (100), the admiration for self-improvement and orderly living (103), the instability caused by the "high geographic mobility(109), the pervasive gender templates and "cult of domesticity(116), the idea of volunteerism (131-132), new developmental understandings of childhood including its romantization (141-165), the high mortality rate (152), and finally, the emphasis on missions and evangelization (168). Each of these factors was either a cause or an effect of the culture that Sunday school was woven into. To understand American Sunday schools, then, it does little good to retrace Rakes'influential steps; we must look to the social context of the antebellum and post-Civil War United States. One example of how the institutions efforts were tailored by its context can be seen in the emergence of the wide range of literature on moral reform and temperance (111). This did not grow out of a vacuity, but rather from the resettlement of many youths in urban areas and in the new understandings of adolescents that emerged in the antebellum era. Other formative factors were the move towards decentralization and the millennial hopes of the day. Boylan has done a fine job in offering what can be seen as a case study in the contextual nature of education as she realizes that the curriculum is situated among particular historical, social, political, and even religious realties. Each of these factors is a stream feeding into an ever moving, ever changing cultural river.

Boylan is to be commended for a text that is lucid, astute, and thoroughly researched. Unfortunately these adjectives cannot be ascribed to many other historical works on religious education. Boylan is a refreshing recess from the encyclopedic chronicles that glut library shelves. The major strengths of her work are the wide range of primary sources (which include statistics, pictures, diaries, and contemporaneous literature), her perceptive understanding of the broader social scene in which Sunday school found itself, and for remaining relatively objective in her assessment.

Weaknesses, which are few, include the paucity of examination of the theological convictions on which various goals and strategies were founded. While the author occasionally does allude to such roots (as in the conversion vs. nurture debate), these references are just that, allusions, and fail to inform the reader of the rationale that was surely in the minds of the leaders of the Sunday school. We are left to believe that Sunday school was a product of its social culture and nothing else. Surely the Puritan roots of America, for example, had something (if not more than just "something to do with the conversionists' attitudes and strategies. The book may leave the reader without theological aptitude with a one-dimensional perspective on a movement that was multi-faceted. Aside from this, however, SUNDAY SCHOOL is a fascinating and valuable text.