When Jefferson died in 1826, the nation stood on the threshold of a stupendous transformation. During the ensuing quarter century it expanded enormously in space and population. Commerce flourished and so did agriculture. The age witnessed the rise of the common man with the right to vote and hold office. It was a time of overflowing optimism, of dreams of perpetual progress, moral uplift, and social betterment. Such was the climate that engendered the common school. Open freely to every child and upheld by public funds, it was to be a lay institution under the sovereignty of the state, the archetype of the present-day American public school. Bringing the common school into being was not easy. Against it bulked the doctrine that any education that excluded religious instruction—as all state-maintained schools were legally compelled to do—was godless. Nor had there been any great recession of the contention that education was not a proper governmental function and for a state to engage there was an intrusion into parental privilege. Even worse was the fact that public schooling would occasionally rise in taxes.
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It influenced them to express their feelings through color and such instead of typical art of that time.
