The era of optimism, 1850-1870: a preliminary reappraisal

Hervey B. Wilbur founded the Barre School, the first private residential school in the United States, in 1848. Samuel G. Howe began the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble Minded Youth, the first residential public school in the United States, in 1850. Correspondence of the period indicates educational results were less than expected and that strains of pessimism surfaced quite early. By the late 1850s, both Howe and Wilbur raised the possibility of custodial care. The primary source material suggests that the disillusionment with the residential facility as a vehicle for reform and habilitation reflected the decreased faith in moral education and remediation of problems associated with insanity, criminal behavior, and the poverty in the pre-Civil War period.