History of American Education
Midterm Review
M. McKenna
Laws/Court Cases/Events impacting Schooling:
“Satan Deluder” Acts
- Started in Massachusetts Bay Colony
- Towns of 50+ families were required to have a school
o Meant to save children from being corrupted by Satan.
- Law didn’t work because it wasn’t enforced and not every town complied
o Eventually led to public education lying in the control of towns.
Indian Removal Act
- Boarding schools originally run by missionaries to Christianize the Indians and to teach them proper
morals
- Government eventually took over and expanded the program
o Wanted to force Indian assimilation into American Society
o Taught trades and Euro-American way of life.
o Eventually enrolled nearly half of all Indian children.
- Most stayed only a few years before leaving schools.
- Mostly unsuccessful at crushing ancestral ways.
Nat Turner Rebellion
- Slave who learned to read and write at an early age.
- Led large scale rebellion against whites, killing many.
Morrill Acts
- Federal act that secured state land for public universities.
- Universities focused on agriculture and mechanics (Purdue, MSU, Cornell, etc)
- Important: Government is saying that school is important
o Allows government some control over education ($$$)
- Meant to help counteract any threats to American Dominance.
- Morrill Acts solidify high schools and their place in education.
Kalamazoo Case
- Childless tax payers sued because they didn’t want to pay taxes that were appropriated for the local high
school.
- State supreme court denied the lawsuit.
- Important: Established precedence that schools could be funded by public monies.
Dred Scott v. Stanford
- Ruled that slaves could never be citizens of the United States.
- Slaves were not protected by the constitution.
- Slaves could not sue in court.
- Slaves were private property and could not be taken away from owners without due process.
Plessy v. Ferguson
- Upheld racial segregation as legal
- “Separate but equal”
Ancient/middle age influences on Education
- Originally only rich white men: held true for many centuries.
- Early education in Rome taught social control: we see this again with the Indians.
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Trivium/Quadrivium
- Trivium:
- Taught Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic….Learning to think and reason!
- THEIR High School
- What our universities are modeled after.
-Quadrivium
- Taught Math, Geometry, Music, and astronomy.
- Only attended if you were going to be a teacher
- THEIR college.
- Equivalent to our High School.
5 “roots” of American Education from Europe
- Arcane Knowledge
- How we decide what to teach is based on what people believe to be true or not.
- Professional training
- Guilds/apprenticeship.
- Religious thought/written word.
- Printing Press allowed wide spread publication.
- Religion is still driving force in education.
- Otium & Leisure
- Leisure = privileged, smarter than others, part of chosen.
- Lazy = gentleman in medieval times.
- New World/Old World Contrast.
- Food, culture, land all dramatically different in colonial America than in Britain.
- This created tensions.
- New World was big, spread everyone out.
- Central control was a given in Europe, not in America.
- Religion complicated America because everyone had diff. beliefs.
- Education was more expansive in new world.
European Guilds
- Organization of skilled laborers (Butchers, Goldsmiths, Blacksmiths, etc.)
- Acted as political force in towns.
- Protected quality, craftsmanship.
- Protectionists, Imposed taxes and prevented members of same guild from entering the town.
- Trained apprentices.
- Vocational school stems from guilds.
Forms of capital
- Social Capital: idea that you have a stock of social/network capital.
o Relationships matter, both # of and importance of connections.
o
- Political Capital: Your image & Personal power within political fields
o Perception of others about you.
o
- Economic Capital: Amount of physical wealth you Have access to.
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- Cultural Capital: Your access to capital embedded in culture (Libraries, museums, etc)
o Schooling adds to your cultural capital.
Emergence/discovery of “childhood”
- Idea comes from Comenius.
- Children were originally seen as little adults.
- Idea didn’t spread quickly.
Enlightenment ideals/qualities
- Optimistic view of human life.
- Reason = Knowledge
- Religion separated from Education
- Cultural relativism
- Human centered ideology
- “Noble Savage”
- Questioning sexual morality
- Idea of questioning social class/access/mobility.
Tensions regarding emergence of schooling in Colonial America – Region, Control, For whom?
- New England, forerunner for all things education.
- First to enact laws regarding education.
- Education at school was seen as secondary to the home.
- Schools helped you not to go to hell.
- New England Primer.
- Slaves were first educated by masters who needed them to know basic math/reading.
- Black education in the south didn’t exist mostly until after civil war.
- Education in south had smaller schools
o Those who had $ were educated
o Leads to an aristocracy
- Middle Colonies: Schools focused on religion or cultural belonging.
Characteristics of Common School Movement (note: regional differences)
- Education becomes seen as more important, but who pays for these common schools?
- Rural schools were 1 room school houses wthat focused on religious based ag schools.
- Idea of free school comes from charity schools in urban areas.
o Causes common schools to be linked with poor.
o Attending public schools associated with not being able to afford private schools.
- Public schooling essentially trained students for factories
o Monotony and boredom
o Bonus if the students felt patriotic.
Empiricism
Colonial Schooling
Normal Schools
- Created by Horace Mann
- Educated teachers.
- Standardized education techniques.
- Influenced women to be educators
o Females are best because of their nurturing nature.
- Instituted around the time girls start attending school.
- Big opportunity for women.
Lancastrian Education
- Recitation & Memorization
- Used many monitors (often older students) & 1 teacher to control many students
o Kept order and Structure
- Very efficient
o Little in, great output
- Reward system
o Accuracy is praised
- Empiricism & Measurement
o Measuring is paramount
o Induced competition.
Industrialism – impact on education
- Causes a devaluation in skilled labor
o Apprenticeships disappear.
- Little autonomy or independence in workforce
o Squashes individualism
- Effects education:
o Pulled kids from school to work
Factories liked kids because they would work for less & for longer hours
Had just as much energy as adults and could handle their work
States enacted literacy laws for workers…law not followed.
o Caused more immigrants to come
Caused problems with social cohesion & infrastructure.
Evolution of National Identity/Republicanism – impact on education
- Westward expansion caused us to see ourselves in competition with the western world: mainly Britain.
o Threat from others needed to be counteracted.
o Education gives us control over citizens.
- Republican ideals & civic duty were to be taught in schools.
o Effected large city education
o Federally proposed education.
- War of 1812 upped rhetoric about national identity.
- Education helped immigrants to assimilate to this country.
- Used in educating Indians.
o Forced assimilation into our society.
Scientific Racism
- Science created to prove white supremacy over blacks.
- Eugenics movement
o Used heredity as a defining factor in who we are.
o Placed whites on top and labeled others as inferior.
o Made sterilization & separation of blacks morally correct.
Blacks were seen as going extinct due to lack of good traits.
Not seen as intelligent enough to sustain species
Therefore, no reason to bring them into society.
- Giddings 3 classes, always placing blacks on bottom.
o Classes part of evolution development.
Comenius
- Czech immigrant.
- Produced first textbook for kids that had pictures.
- Believed that kids were:
o Inherently good
o Should not be beaten
o Can learn
o Kids from many faiths can learn together.
- Revolutionary, kids were seen as little adults at the time.
- Idea didn’t spread quickly because he was Czech.
Sequoya
- Leader of Cherokee nation.
- Saw peace with whites as only way to co-exist.
o Created alphabet modeled after English.
Only native American that translated language into English.
- Knew that without assimilation conflicts would only continue.
Pestalozzi
- Had 6 tenets of education (late 1700’s – 1830’s)
o Personality is sacred
o People learn through object & repetition
o Love of those we educate is essential
o “Anschaung” – Direct/concrete observation.
o Man learns actions through objects
o Repetition is purposeful
Horace Mann
- One of the 1st secretaries of education.
- Instituted standardized testing
- Separated schools from religion.
- Created first Normal School
- Started tradition of longer schooling.
- Pushed idea of everyone paying tax to fund schools.
- Anti corporal punishment
- His 10 annual reports about schools give us a good insight about schools back then.
Samuel Chapman Armstrong
- Army general who “Connected” well with blacks.
- Founded Hampton Institute.
- Believed in white superiority but also believed in educating and assimilating blacks into society.
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Franklin Giddings
Booker T. Washington (will talk about this on Tuesday.
- Educated at Hampton
- Headed Tuskegee institute: Normal school for blacks.
Brief ideas on education in ancient Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese civilizations.
Mayan, Incan, and Aztec Culture/education
Constituent Groups Related to Education in 1800s and their experiences:
Immigrants
Native Americans
African Americans
Women
