Education

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Education is an American measure of success.
What should we teach and why? Practical or classical?
How should we teach and why?
Religion and the public schools.
Federal government and school standards.
American business needs well-educated Americans.

Is education really an American value?

We laugh at smart people.

We are a strange combination in America.  Jokes are made in every generation about the kids who love books. The terms change: greasy grind, book worm, nerd, geek.  They all send the same message - one strand of American thought says it is better to be popular than to be good at school work.

Cartoons and ads sell the idea that "back to school" is a dull moment. Even powerful business and government leaders brag about not being good students when they were kids. When people campaign for public office, they often try to sound just like "one of us" - using slang, dropping the ends of words, using their nicknames.

Alongside this streak is the reality that from the beginning of our history, education has been a measure of success.  The people who led the American Revolution and framed the new government had read philosophy and history and used both to argue for a declaration of independence.  Unlike Great Britain, our Constitution is written and when someone treats us unfairly, we hire someone who went to college and law school to analyze the words and prove that our guaranteed protection has been trashed.

The creators of our American way of governing believed that they were superior to all those who were not well-educated - women and small farmers and slaves. Since there were no royal families and no nobles in America, the key to power has always been gaining wealth - that is, owning property. And education has always gone hand in hand with wealth, known as socio-economic status or SES.  In colonial times, the wealthy paid a tutor to teach them, and today rich real estate areas get more money per public school pupil than poor ones.

Surprisingly, the issues we argue about schooling today -- who is taught, what is taught, who teaches, who decides, and the role of religion and government -- have been with us from the beginning of immigration to this continent. What follows is a brief history of critical issues that have and still do dominate our personal and public debate about schooling.

Controlling the message: who should we teach? Why?

The English who won the colonial wars belonged to a variety of Protestant Christian sects.  Each was determined that its particular church and teachings be the dominant one. And since they were so far from England, the men of property who belonged to the dominant church wanted to make sure that the rest of the people learned only their religion and obeyed the laws made in the assembly by the propertied men.

Massachusetts passed a law in 1642 requiring all parents and masters of apprentices to be sure that children and servants could read and write by government standards. In this way, they would know the laws and obey them. If parents and masters failed in this responsibility, the government could remove the child and place him where he could get proper teaching.

Towns of fifty families had to hire a schoolmaster and towns of 100 families had to hire someone who could prepare boys for Harvard College. Girls were tutored in the kitchens of women who were paid to do so.

In the middle colonies, most children went to religious schools.

In the rural south people were so spread out that there were few communities that had enough people to warrant a public school. In addition, laws were passed to make it illegal to teach slaves to read for fear they would gather information that would cause them to revolt. Children learned through apprenticeships. State-supported schools appeared only after the Civil War.

After 150 years of colonial rule, when the western territories taken from the French were settled, the federal government made education a requirement and set aside a section of land for tax-supported schools. A separate section of land was set aside for religion.

This was the beginning of the separation of church and state in public schools. Local townships paid part of the cost and the state government paid for the rest.  

Behavior through belief and training; the politics of control.

Today we still call for a standard civics or social studies education and courses to teach children to behave in socially responsible ways, called character education. Many religious groups have separate schools and some members of religious groups try to pass laws to put their religious message into public school teaching for all children. At every level of government people compete for control of the minds of children through laws, choice of books, and regulation of teachers' messages.

School board elections are critical entry points for people who believe that their beliefs are the proper ones for everyone's children.

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In 1749 Benjamin Franklin tried to start a school that would teach English, not Latin, and scientific and practical subjects, not just religion and law. He wanted learning to be connected to the life children and their families lived. Franklin's plan was defeated. From that time on, Americans have debated what children should know.

Jefferson, too, after he had drafted the Declaration of Independence, served in the Virginia legislature and tried to pass a law to create a free system of tax-supported elementary schools for everyone except slaves.

His bill was defeated. It wasn't until after his presidency that he created the University of Virginia (1825) and introduced electives on the assumption that different people would want to and should study different subjects.

The idea that there should be nationwide agreement on education in America emerged in the form of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language.

As the economy changed and the nation moved west, the debate on what to teach in colleges heated up. Should a man be educated for industry, farming, or banking? In 1828 Yale University held fast to classical education of Latin and Greek, as better to discipline the mind rather than prepare for a job.

The debate continues today. Should all children have access to a college preparatory education or should some be taught practical courses instead? When should the decision be made? Who should make it?

American democracy and American diversity: topics then and now.

Over a hundred years later, the questions still come up: what is an appropriate education for each child? Is it the same for everyone? Some adults are clearly "smarter" than others; how do we know what a child's potential for learning and thinking is?

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Lectures or practical experiences?  Another long-lasting, continuing debate in American education. Working class people from industry and farming formed an experimental community in New Harmony, Indiana in 1825. They believed in practical schooling and used a new method of teaching developed in Europe by Johann Pestalozzi. They claimed that children should learn first through hands-on experiences in their daily lives and that would lead them later to the big ideas for which the experience is an example.

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In 1925 a court case ruled that under the equal protection clause of the 14^th amendment to the Constitution, parents had the right to choose the school for their child - public, private, or parochial.

Can schools connect Americans across social class lines? Who can teach for equality among all students? How and what should teachers be taught?

Can education create harmony among all Americans? By the time the American Revolution was over, there were great differences among the citizens within every state, and there were outspoken leaders who were concerned that the poor could not take their rightful place in the society without an equal education.

In Massachusetts in 1839, Horace Mann, a lawyer appointed as Secretary of Education, created common schools and the first public "normal school" to prepare teachers. The upper classes went to colleges to prepare for ministry, law, and medicine. Now, teaching was promoted as a separate profession.

Throughout the 20^th century and into this one, the debate goes on. Teacher's colleges have gained respect for understanding the development of children, yet pressures to balance that learning with the subject matter of the liberal arts continue. Most states require certification by a teacher's college in order to teach in a public school. Private and parochial schools may set different criteria.

Hotly debated as early as 1932 was the question "should teachers lead society or should they follow whatever the majority thought they should teach?"

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For much of our history, school standards were set by state government or local government. The tenth amendment to the Constitution states that all powers not specifically granted to the Congress should remain with the individual states.

Opportunity for all:

After World War II, however, the Congress passed the GI Bill, entitling every soldier to a federal scholarship to go to college. And ever since, there has been an ongoing debate about the role of the federal government in increasing educational opportunity and educational standards for all across the nation.

Competing with the enemy:

After the Soviet Union sent a man-made satellite, Sputnik, into space, the Congress in 1957 passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) designed to pay for increased science, math, and foreign language teaching and learning on the grounds that we needed to know as much as the enemy.

Poverty and education:

In the post-war period, many people who could afford to do so moved from the cities to the suburbs. The American tradition of local school districts paying for teachers and schools meant that the poor children, especially minority children, had fewer tax dollars to support their schools. It took a generation and political will to use federal money to help poor children and their schools. In 1965, as part of the Great Society War on Poverty of the Lyndon Johnson administration, the federal government voted in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), providing one billion extra tax dollars in the first year alone to educate the economically disadvantaged.

Handicapped children:

When Gerald Ford was President, the Congress passed a law to provide special education for handicapped children. This law sets strict standards, each of which is designed to benefit the individual disabled child. They must be taught in the "least restrictive environment", evaluated by a professional team, have the written permission of parents, and an Individual Education Plan (IEP).

Unfunded mandates: