During the nineteenth century, social reformers took hold of an already existing institution-the school-and sought to make it compulsory. In the process, they supplanted parents and domestic life-the home-as the primary educational force for children. As education was taken out of the home, American classrooms were at the same time remade into a particular kind of home life-one based upon a sentimentalized maternity, where love can always triumph over the "public" and "masculine" forces of competition, merit, and hierarchy.