ude intellectual attainment, nurturing relationships, and social justice: "No amount of happiness, even on the part of a distinct majority, can ever license bigotry or prejudice" (Kierstead and Wagner, Jr., 1993, p. 61). Mills advocated that teachers tolerate student differences in order to maximize their potential to achieve optimal happiness.
The common school movement during the nineteenth century emphasized the public benefits of education. The ideology of the common school movement advocated the teaching of a common body of knowledge to students of various religious, social, and ethnic backgrounds. The desired outcome of such instruction was national unity and stability: " . . . if children educated in common were taught a common social and political ideology, a decrease in political conflict and social problems would result" (Spring, 1990, p. 74). Horace Mann, a noted common school reformer, believed that equal educational opportunity could reduce class distinctions, crime, and poverty.
Equal educational opportunity became one of the dominant themes of the twentieth century, but from the perspective of improving human capital. Students no longer achieved an equal or common education; instead curriculum was
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