- History of education in the United States
The history of education in the United States, often called foundations of education, is the study of educational policy, formal institutions and informal learning from the 17th to the 21st century.
History
The first American schools opened during the colonial era. As the colonies began to develop, many in New England began to institute mandatory education schemes. In
1642 theMassachusetts Bay Colony made "proper" education compulsory. [ [http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/%7Ecfrnb/masslaws.html Massachusetts Education Laws of 1642 and 1647] . History of American Education] , accessed February 15, 2006.] Similar statutes were adopted in other colonies in the1640s and1650s . Virtually all of the schools opened as a result were private. The nation's first institution of higher learning,Harvard University , was founded in1636 and opened in1638 .Religious denominations established most early universities in order to train ministers. In New England there was an emphasis on literacy so that people could read the Bible. Most of the universities which opened between 1640 and 1750 form the contemporary
Ivy League , including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Brown, theUniversity of Pennsylvania , and several others. [ [http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/show1/ Agriculture and Education in Colonial America] . North Carolina State University. URL accessed on February 28, 2006.] After theAmerican Revolution , the new national government passed theLand Ordinance of 1785 , which set aside a portion of every township in the unincorporated territories of the United States for use in education. The provisions of the law remained unchanged until theHomestead Act of1862 . After the Revolution, an emphasis was put on education, especially in the northern states, which made the US have one of the highest literacy rates at the time.The school system remained largely private and unorganized until the1840 s. In fact, the first national census conducted in 1840 indicated that near-universal (about 97%) literacy among the white population had been achieved. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=xMj-8u5DsgsC&pg=PR5&dq=census+%22United+States%22+1800&as_brr=1#PPA144,M1/ 1840 Census Data] . Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty Years, accessed May 10, 2008.] The same data tables demonstrate that of the 1.8 millions girls between five and fifteen (and 1.88 million boys of the same age) about 55% attended the primary schools and academies. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=xMj-8u5DsgsC&pg=PR5&dq=census+%22United+States%22+1800&as_brr=1#PPA144,M1 1840 Census Data] . Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty years, accessed May 10, 2008.] The data tables do not note the actual attendance rates, but only reflect the static numbers at the time of the U.S. census.Data from the indentured servant contracts of German immigrant children in Pennsylvania from 1771-1817 showed that the number of children receiving education increased from 33.3% in 1771-1773 to 69% in 1787-1804. Additionally, the same data showed that the ratio of school education versus home education rose from .25 in 1771-1773 to 1.68 in 1787-1804. [Grubb, Farley. "Educational Choice in the Era Before Free Public Schooling: Evidence from German Immigrant Children in Pennsylvania, 1771-1817" "The Journal of Economic History", Vol. 52, No. 2. (Jun., 1992), pp. 363-375. ] The increase in the number of children being educated, and the fact that more students were being educated in school rather than at home, could help explain how near-universal literacy was achieved by 1840.
Education reformers such as
Horace Mann ofMassachusetts began calling for public education systems for all. Upon becoming the secretary of education in Massachusetts in1837 , Mann helped to create a statewide system of "common schools," which referred to the belief that everyone was entitled to the same content in education. These early efforts focused primarily on elementary education. The common-school movement began to catch on in the North.Connecticut adopted a similar system in1849 , and Massachusetts passed a compulsory attendance law in1852 .It was not until after the Civil War and under Reconstruction governments, that the coalition of black and white Republicans in state legislatures established universal public education in the South. This was one of the major achievements of Reconstruction governments. [W.E.B. DuBois, "Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880", New York: Oxford University Press, 1935; reprint, The Free Press, 1998] By 1870, every state provided free elementary education. Although in some states, education was first established as integrated, after white Democrats regained political power in the 1870s, they imposed segregation on all schools, and later on all public facilities. The South was struggling after the war, but as they had before the war, the wealthiest classes resisted taxes that would provide sufficient funding for education.
More significantly, through laws and new constitutions, white legislatures systematically disfranchised most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor whites in each Southern state from 1890-1908. The disfranchisement lasted for decades; in most states, it lasted with little relief until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s had gained passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. [ [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=224731 Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", "Constitutional Commentary", Vol.17, 2000, pp.12-13] , accessed 10 Mar 2008] As one result, white-dominated legislatures consistently underfunded schools for African Americans. Most rural schools ran shortened schedules because children were needed in farming. It was chiefly due to the African American community's own tremendous efforts with the help of some Northern financial support in establishing schools and colleges, that 30,000 African American teachers were trained and by 1900, a majority of blacks in the South were literate. [James D.Anderson, "Black Education in the South, 1860-1935", Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1988, pp. 244-245]
By
1900 , 31 states required children to attend school from the ages of 8- to 14-years-old. As a result, by1910 72 percent of American children attended school. Half the nation's children attended one-room schools. In1918 , every state required students to at least complete elementary school. Lessons consisted of students reading aloud from their texts such as the "McGuffey Readers ", and placed emphasis on rote memorization. Teachers often used physical punishment, such as hitting students on the knuckles withbirch switches, for incorrect answers.Because the public schools focused on assimilation, immigrants who were not Protestant organized to develop their own schools. This was also an effort to create a social environment more supportive than the often hostile natives who resented immigration by Catholics. In addition, Catholic communities raised money to build colleges and seminaries to train teachers and religious to head their churches. [Dennis Clark, "The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations of Urban Experience", Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 4th printing, 1984, pp.96-101] The most numerous early Catholics were Irish immigrants in the early to mid-19th century, followed by Germans, Italians and other Catholics from southern and eastern Europe. By the time the later groups immigrated, Irish immigrants and their descendants had often built an extensive network of churches and schools in many cities. The Irish dominated the American Catholic Church for generations. Though the private schools met some opposition, in
1925 the Supreme Court ruled in "Pierce v. Society of Sisters " that students could attend private schools to comply with compulsory education laws.To put the historical progress of education in the United States into perspective, American towns began providing high schools in 1910. By 1940, 50% of young adults had earned a high school diploma.
The "High School Movement"
At the dawn of the
twentieth century , for the first time in history, leaders believed that the post-literacy schooling of the masses at the secondary and higher levels, would greatly enhance economic production. This “high school movement” in America radically changed the education of its youth and set the United States apart from other nations for much of the twentieth century.In
1900 the American high school underwent a series of fundamental changes. It became less classical and more practical, although still primarily academic. Its diploma was a terminal degree for youths whose first jobs would be in a host of white-collar positions and certain blue-collar ones as well. EconomistClaudia Goldin believed the incredible growth of secondary schooling occurred in United States was accompanied by a set of “virtues”. These virtues included public funding, openness, gender neutrality, local (and also state) control, separation of church and state, and an academic curriculum. Relative to other nations in Europe, the United States took on this movement as a result of these virtues, whereas others lagged. Europe had more exclusivity to their education system and focused on apprentice-type schools. The openness and gender neutrality, according to Goldin, allowed for the United States to have higher rates of enrollment than in nations of Europe. [cite journal
authorlink = Goldin, Claudia
title = "The Human-Capital Century and American Leadership: Virtues of the Past"
journal = The Journal of Economic History
volume = 61
pages = 263–290
date=June 2001
doi = 10.1017/S0022050701028017
author = Goldin, Claudia]America chose a type of post-elementary schooling that was consistent with the particular features of the New World — flexible, general and widely applicable skills that were not tied to particular occupations and geographic places had enormous option value. Skills had to survive transport across firms, industries, occupations, and geography in the dynamic American economy.
Support for the high school movement occurred at the grass-roots level of local cities and school systems. The federal government had virtually no involvement until much later in the twentieth century. State compulsory education and
child labor laws played only a minor role in the expansion of secondary-school education, but states had encouraged broader education by supporting state colleges and normal schools before the turn of the century. The U.S. system of education was characterized for much of the twentieth century by a set of virtues that included publicly funded mass secondary education that was open and forgiving, academic yet practical, secular, gender neutral, and funded by small, fiscally independent districts. During the first half of the twentieth century, the American template succeeded far better than did the competing templates of Britain, France, and Germany. The U.S. system produced a considerably larger group of educated citizens and workers.Higher education
At the beginning of the 20th century, fewer than 1,000 colleges with 160,000 students existed in the United States. Explosive growth in the number of colleges occurred at the end of the
1800 s and early twentieth century. Philanthropists endowed many of these institutions.Leland Stanford , one ofThe Big Four , for example, establishedStanford University in1891 .Many American public universities were created because of the
Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act s of 1862 and 1890. [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Morrill.html Primary Documents in American History] . Library of Congress. URL accessed February 19, 2005.] During the rapid westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century, the federal government took control of huge amounts of so-called "empty" land (often after forcing the previous Native American residents into reservations). Under the Morrill Acts, the Federal government offered to give 30,000 acres (121 km²) of federal land to each state on the condition that they used the land (or proceeds from its sale) to establish colleges. [http://www.researchfor.com] [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Morrill.html Primary Documents in American History] . Library of Congress. URL accessed February 19, 2005.] The resulting schools are often referred to asland-grant college s.Founded in 1863,
Kansas State University is the pioneer land-grant institution. Other well-known land-grant universities includeTexas A&M University ,Pennsylvania State University , The Ohio State University and theUniversity of California system . Some states, especially in the South, created more than one land-grant institution, with one established as ahistorically black college (HBCU ). Three states,Alabama ,Massachusetts andNew York , designated private universities as one of their land-grant institutions. Respectively, these wereTuskegee University , an HBCU;Massachusetts Institute of Technology andCornell University .Following
World War II , theGI Bill made college education possible for many veterans. It helped create a widespread belief in the necessity of college education, and decreased an association of higher education as a pursuit only for the wealthy. [ [http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~dschugurensky/assignment1/1944gibill.html 1944 GI Bill of Rights] . History of Education: Selected Moments of the 20th Century. URL accessed on February 18, 2005.] The rate of enrollment at institutions of higher learning has grown ever since, although it has varied by gender and ethnicity.egregation and inequality
For much of its history, education in the United States was segregated (or even only available) based upon race. Early integrated schools such as the
Noyes Academy , founded in 1835, inCanaan, New Hampshire , were generally met with fierce local opposition. For the most part, African Americans received very little to no formal education before the Civil War, but some in the North managed to become literate. In the south whereslavery was legal, many states had laws prohibiting teaching enslaved African Americans to read or write. A few taught themselves, others learned from white playmates or more generous masters, but most were not able to learn to read and write. Schools for free people of color were privately run and supported, as were most of the limited schools for white children. Poor white children did not attend school. The wealthier planters hired tutors for their children.After the Civil War and emancipation, a coalition of freedmen and white Republicans in Reconstruction state legislatures passed most of the first laws establishing public education in Southern states. The Freedman's Bureau was created as an agency of the military governments that managed Reconstruction. It set up schools in many areas, ran banks where freedmen could save earnings, helped administer labor contracts between planters and freedmen, and tried to help to help educate and protect freedmen during the transition after the war. Congress passed civil rights bills, but these were difficult to enforce in an atmosphere where white paramilitary groups operated to suppress, terrorize and control freedmen.
After white Democrats regained power in state legislatures in the late 1870s, they began to pass legislation to control African Americans: the so-called
Jim Crow laws imposed legal segregation in public facilities, worked to control African American freedom of movement and work, established convict-lease programs (which adversely affected African Americans), and created provisions to reduce voting by blacks and poor whites, such as imposition of poll taxes, more strict residency requirements, and literacy tests. As the numbers of blacks and poor whites on voter registration rolls decreased, state legislatures went on to pass new constitutions that completed effective disfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites.Although the African American community quickly began litigation to challenge such provisions, in the 19th century
Supreme Court challenges generally were not decided in their favor. The Supreme Court case of "Plessy v. Ferguson " (1896 ) upheld the segregation of races in schools as long as each race enjoyed parity in quality of education (the "separate but equal" principle). However, few black students actually received equal education, and they suffered for decades from inadequate funding, outmoded or dilapidated facilities, and deficient textbooks (often ones previously used in white schools).Starting in 1914 and going into the 1930s,
Julius Rosenwald , a Sears Roebuck executive and philanthropist from Chicago, established theRosenwald Fund to provide seed money for matching local contributions and stimulating the construction of new schools for African Americans, mostly in the rural South. He worked in association with Booker T. Washington and architects at Tuskegee University to create model plans for schools and teacher housing. With the requirement that money had to be raised by both blacks and whites, and schools approved by local school boards (controlled by whites), Rosenwald helped get more than 5,000 schools built across the South. African Americans went to extraordinary efforts to raise money for such schools, in effect taxing themselves twice, since part of the money came from public funds raised from their taxes. In some communities, people with property took out second mortgages to help fund the schools, and parents contributed direct labor to build them. [James D. Anderson, "Black Education in the South, 1880-1935", Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1988, pp.158-161]The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s helped publicize the inequities of the long system of segregation. In
1954 the Supreme Court in "Brown v. Board of Education " unanimously declared that separate facilities were inherently unequal and unconstitutional. TheCivil Rights Act s of1960 and1964 further helped end legal segregation of public facilities.Integration of schools has been a protracted process, however, with results affected by vast population movement in many areas, affected by suburban sprawl, the disappearance of industrial jobs, and movement of jobs out of former powerhouse industrial cities and into new areas of the South. Although required by court order, integrating the first black students in the South met with intense opposition. In
1957 the integration of Central High School inLittle Rock ,Arkansas , had to be enforced by federal troops. PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower took control of the National Guard, after the governor tried to use them to prevent integration. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, integration continued with varying degrees of difficulty. Some states and cities tried to overcome "de facto" segregation that was the result of housing patterns, by using forced busing, a method that provoked resistance in many places, including northern cities.Although full equality and parity in education would take many years (many school districts are technically still under the integration mandates of local courts), technical equality in education had been achieved by 1970. [ [http://www.thejacksonchannel.com/news/6805285/detail.html Madison Desegregation Hearing To Be Held Tuesday, TheJacksonChannel] , accessed February 14, 2006.]
The comparative quality of education among black and white students, however, is still often the subject of dispute. While middle class African American children have made good progress, poor minorities have struggled. With school systems based on property taxes, there are wide disparities in funding between wealthy suburbs or districts and often poor, inner-city areas or towns. "De facto segregation" has been difficult to overcome as residential neighborhoods have remained more segregated than workplaces or public facilities. Racial segregation has not been the only factor in inequities; residents in New Hampshire challenged property tax funding and contrasts between wealthy and poorer areas through lawsuits that sought to have more equal funding of school systems across the state.
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