The question that occupied the earliest education reformers was what the mission of the new school system should be. A group of educators with a humanist perspective argued that the proper goal of education was to provide students with the freedom to discover their own talents and interests by offering an environment that would allow them to learn and develop at their own pace. Some humanists even suggested that there should be no required courses, and that schools should offer more courses than any student could possibly take.27 But when it came time to establish a nationwide, compulsory high
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