A History of American Public Education

1. A History of American Public Education The New England Primer, known as the “Little Bible” of New England, was the most widely circulated schoolbook in America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

2. Bell-Ringer • Do you value your education? Why or why not?

3. When the Europeans first explored, and then settled, in the New World, they brought vocational, agricultural, and religious education to the various Indian peoples who lived in the different North American regions. It would be the English, however, who would have the greatest impact on American education. • The English sought to relive their European education experience in the New World. They inherited from the Renaissance the belief that the well-educated gentleman knew the classical languages of Greek and Latin. From the Protestant Reformation, they inherited the belief that schooling should be saturated with religious doctrine so that the young could have their faith nurtured and so that they could defend it. • Schooling in early Puritan New England offered basic curriculums of reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Teachers were often not teachers “for life,” but moving on to another profession—most were men. The school itself was typically a one-room building that had boys and girls of various ages. • The popular method of teaching was recitation—children repeating lessons they had memorized earlier.

4. A typical Colonial-era schoolhouse. Let’s see you complain about CHS now!

5. Oh, the threat of corporal punishment!

6. The foundations of the American public school system were established during the social transformations that took place during the 1800’s. The public school was developed and put into practice in the years before the Civil War in the northern states. After the Civil War, it spread to the southern states. • The common or public school was to be a publically supported and controlled institution that offered a curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic, penmanship, grammar, history, geography, and health. These schools also built up values of timeliness, hard work, and industriousness. • An important argument for public schooling during these days was to promote citizenship education, good workers, literate voters, and to encourage shared American values and loyalties. • Before public high schools were around, academies were institutions meant to bridge the gap between elementary and college instruction. After the 1870s, public high schools became the major institution of American secondary education.

7. The old idea behind public schooling was to encourage shared American values and loyalties. Is that still pretty much the same today?

8. The high school was a response to an America that was becoming more industrial rather than agricultural. It was to service those who were going beyond elementary school and those who were to enter institutions of higher education. • Today, as high school students, many of the curricular and institutional changes of today are a result of the Progressive Era (1900-1920) and the ideas of several progressive reformers. • Progressive educators believed that schooling could exercise a reforming influence, but the schools themselves had to be reformed. • Progressive educators sought to develop instructional methods that released children’s creativity and stressed children’s interests and needs. John Dewey, for example, stressed students solving personal, social, and intellectual problems. • There were critics of this approach who thought schools should train children in the basic subjects and that schools should stress hard work, discipline, and a transmission of cultural heritage rather then bringing social, economic, or political change.

9. John Dewey