Book excerpt: Because they recognized themselves as being engaged in the making of a nation, the essayists thought readily about education as a national problem and as a national opportunity. These essaysist revealed a bias toward "the good of society" rather than "the good of the individual." Society essentially could not afford to leave the question of education up to parents. These essays are in one sense a commentary on the structure and pattern, or lack thereof, of organized education inherited from the colonial period. As the United States increasingly moves toward some sense of maturity and of the responsibility that goes with it, the visions and the expectations of these eighteenth-century republicans can be instructive. If, as sometimes now seems possible, we are beginning to think and act nationally in matters of education, these writers deserve our attention as the first Americans in any systematic way to turn their talents toward defining the American dream in education. - Introduction.