Even though drawings by artists have been discussed in the history of art since the Renaissance, drawing education in the context of public schools did not come about until the middle of the 19th century. This paper examines the drawing education movement in the United States at the end of the 19th century, focusing on the primary sources of drawing education in public schools. William Bentley Fowle’s book in 1825, entitled Linear Drawing, and Rembrandt Peale’s Graphics in 1834 are considered the early texts for drawing education in public schools. These texts reflect Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s (1746-1827) theory of drawing and education. Pestalozzi asserts that one’s capacities for perception, drawing, writing, and languages are fundamentally related. Drawing is the foundation of writing and perceptual practice and could promote one’s language skills. Based on the works of Fowle, Peale, and Pestalozzi, this paper explores how educational values were interpreted and practiced in the field of drawing education, and it makes recommendations for drawing education in the ‘here’ and ‘now’. The Massachusetts Drawing Acts of 1870, relating to free instruction in drawing, directed the Board of Education to prepare a plan for free instruction to men, women, and children in mechanical drawing either in existing schools or in those to be established for that purpose in all towns and cities in the Commonwealth having more than 5,000 inhabitants. In response to the Massachusetts Drawing Acts, the Committee on Drawing in Boston was organized, which created programs for teachers who could teach drawing in evening classes. Charles Callahan Perkins in the Committee on Drawing contacted Henry Cole who was the director of South Kensington School in London, since South Kensington School was considered to be the precursor of industrial art education in England. Additionally, Walter Smith who graduated from South Kensington School drew attention to introducing fine arts and labor systems in England into the educational system in the United States. Thus, Smith introduced industrial drawing and crafts into Massachusetts’s art education systems. Influenced by Pestalozzi’s theory on drawing and writing, Smith developed a series of lectures and created a drawing textbook, entitled Teachers’ Manual of Freehand Drawing and Designing and Guide to Self-Instruction. Most of the images and icons in the textbook are drawn by unaccentuated lines. At the end of the textbook, a grey color appears as the element of training the backgrounds and volumes. When Smith was the first principal of the Massachusetts Normal Art School, the curriculum was established as the education of industrial drawing. The work of Class A (first year) was devoted to Elementary Drawing; Class B to Form, Color, and Industrial Design; Class C to Constructive Arts; and Class D to Sculpture and Design. These groups of subjects could be studied in any order after the student passed Class A, subject only to an examination as to the fitness of the student. The whole of the first year’s work consisted of painstaking drawings of geometrical problems, of perspective, of orthographic projection, of machines, building construction details, shadow projection, cast ornaments, and human and animal forms. The Class B diploma of the second year was earned by work in painting, from head studies or from figure and in water color, tempera, and oil. Constructive arts were listed for the Class C diploma. This meant a good deal of architectural and building-construction drawings, drawings of mechanical details, elevation of objects such as locomotives, and finally, descriptive geometrical and topographical drawings. The fourth diploma available was awarded for sculpture and design. Drawing education in the 19th century in U.S. is interpreted as rather amoral education in the field of work and study than fostering the ability of perception of forms and art appreciation. Drawings emphasizing two-dimensional figures, geometrical compositions, and unaccentuated lines were considered to be the educational means in improving the capacities of language and writing. This point suggests to us the educational meaning of drawings in the here and now.