"In 1795, the nation's leading research institution offered a prize for the best essay on a system of public education for the United States. Over the next two years, the proposals they received ranged from the ridiculous, to the provocative, to the eerily familiar. This book revisits that unique moment in American history, when the founding fathers first opened the enduring debate on how best to educate the American citizenry. In ten essays, leading historians use the American Philosophical Society's education prize as a starting point for broader explorations of critical themes: gender, race, religion, public versus private, centralization versus localism, voluntary associations, higher education, and research methods. This book also publishes, for the first time, all of the original contest essays"--