WEBVTT

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There is a curious pattern
to American history.

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We have tides of action, passion, idealism
and reform. Then the tide goes out

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and we enter into seasons of drift and
cynicism until our problems accumulate,

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our batteries recharge, and we
are ready for a new surge ahead.

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Periods of irresponsibility do not go on
forever. They are followed by eras of

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reform.

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There has been roughly a thirty year
cycle from one period of idealism to

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another. There is a generational aspect
to this. Each present activist was the

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child of an earlier age of action.

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During the 1830s, something without
historical precedent occurred. This module

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examines America's first age of reform.

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That decade saw the first secular
collective movements in history to seek to

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solve social problems. The nation's first
age of reform created the institutions

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we still live with today: The public
school, the prison, the hospital. This era

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saw the first concerted efforts to help
the mentally ill, the blind, the deaf.

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It was a utopian era,
when Americans dreamed

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of eliminating
alcoholism, poverty,

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illiteracy, and crime. The struggle to
end slavery and achieve equal rights for

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women and non-whites are two of
that era's most lasting legacies.