Looking back at the debates about public schooling in the 1820s can be especially important today when Congress seeks to reinscribe the same definitions of schooling that the working class leaders tried to resist in the 19th century. On the platform for the New York Working Man's Party in 1829 was "equal education," a term that meant different things to different members of the party. While one faction believed that a shift in the distribution of power would come about through universal literacy, another believed that a radical restructuring of what constitutes schooling would be necessary to effect any change. The Working Man's party included several thinkers who critically examined education available to the rich and found it generally "useless"; worse, they found that it taught values that reinforced class distinctions. Unfortunately, the party's radical educational objectives--one of which called for a boarding school in which all class distinctions would be wiped away--were ultimately rejected; the party folded shortly after the electoral victory of 1829 partly because other political parties appropriated elements of its majority platform. Meanwhile, the aristocratic Whig party continued to further its objectives, which called for public education to further the nation's capacity to "build, transport, manufacture, mine, nagivate, [and] fortify." The early school system generally taught traditional values of submissiveness and acceptance of one's lot in life, respect for elders, commitment to work and activity, and rote memorization. In short, the curriculum did nothing to further critical literacy. (Contains 30 references.) (TB)