=Evolution of Public Education in the United States.=--We may now return to our discussion of education in America. It has already been seen (chap. XVII) that the organization of schools in the various colonies was largely the result of educational ideals and conditions in the Mother Country. At first the schools of America closely resembled those of the European countries from which the colonists came, and the seventeenth century in American education is largely a period of ‘transplantation.’ But toward the middle of the eighteenth century, as new social and political conditions were evolving and the days of the Revolution were approaching, there were evident a gradual modification of European ideals and the differentiation of American schools toward a type of their own. America has long stood, in theory at least, for equality of opportunity, and this conception of society is apparent in its views of education. The distinguishing characteristic of the American schools has throughout been the attempt of a free people to educate themselves, and, through their elected representatives, the people of the various states have come, in harmony with the genius of American civilization, to initiate, regulate, and control their own systems of education. While the purely American conception of education cannot be fully discerned until almost the middle of the nineteenth century, there can for three-quarters of a century before be clearly distinguished ‘a period of transition’ from the inherited ideals to those of America to-day. This intervening stage of evolution covers roughly the last quarter century of colonial life and the first half century of statehood. To it we must now direct our attention. [Sidenote: The ‘field school.’] [Sidenote: Jefferson’s plan for universal education.]