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History of Education in the USA

Objectives. Overview of the chapter

After reading this chapter learners will have an idea about:

• history of education in the USA
• immigration period
• education during slavery period
• teachers and educator of that period
• immigrants

Immigration Period

Earliest schools were established in the British colonies of the North Atlantic in the 17th century to train boys for reading the Bible. Boston Latin School was established in 1635. Dedham, Massachusetts, had the first tax-funded public school. The Massachusetts Bay Colony made basic education obligatory in the 1640s, and other colonies followed suit. Originally, schools were only for boys, and instruction was given orally. Although the initial textbooks were transported from England, Boston printers republished the English grammar book in their own version in 1690. In the 18th century, public schools were often funded through a combination of local appropriations and fees collected on households with school-age children. The same teacher taught all of the kids in the same room. Except for basic literacy and numeracy, enrollment at a private school was necessary. In 1821, Boston opened the first public high school in the United States. When the British took over New Holland in 1664, most cities already had elementary schools. These schools had ties to the Dutch Reformed Church. German settlers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland supported elementary schools that were closely linked to their churches. In 1727, the sisters of the Order of Saint Ursula established the first North American school for girls in New Orleans, France. By the 1740s, high school women in Philadelphia were also receiving formal education. Primary education for girls began in New England as early as 1767, although female education remained optional and was not available in many communities.

Education and Slavery

Because the southern section of the United States was a slaveholding territory, only whites could study there; it was completely banned to teach enslaved Africans to read and write in the South of the United States. Religious training and basic reading were sometimes advocated for black African Americans in the more progressive northern states. The Church of England and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Countries collaborated in New York to convert the enslaved African people to Christianity. In 1703 the first black Anglican school in New York was established. Governor Robert Hunter issued a proclamation in 1711 ordering slave owners to enable enslaved Africans to attend religious lessons. Education in the United States has been racially segregated (white and black pupils attended separate schools) for the majority of its history, initially in the north then, after the Civil War, when blacks were allowed to attend school, in the south. Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, was an early racially integrated school that was burned by local whites in 1835 and then reestablished as an all-white institution. In 1848, the daughter of Frederick Douglas, the preeminent black abolitionist in the United States, passed her entrance examinations and was enrolled to Rochester, New York's prestigious Seward Seminary, but she was educated separately from white pupils and was later expelled. Slavery hampered the establishment of public education for all children in the American South. Typically, the planter class hired nannies or sent their children to private schools, sometimes in the North and occasionally in Europe. Immediately following the end of the civil war, 1,000 schools were established, educating 90,000 former slaves and their offspring.

Teachers and Educators

Teaching was generally temporary occupation for women until they married, or for men until they took up their major career or found another job in the nineteenth century. Teachers have little training and no official authority. This began to alter in 1823 with the construction of two-year normal or instructional schools, but teaching did not need four years of formal training at a teacher's college in many parts of the United States until after World War II. Despite these and other issues, by 1870, all states had free primary schools, and the US population had one of the highest literacy rates in the world. In the nineteenth century, Horace Mann of Massachusetts was a leading proponent of educational reform. Mann advocated for a nationwide professional teacher training system and compulsory school attendance regulations as Secretary of Education. By 1900, 34 states had mandated school attendance. Thirty states mandated school attendance until the age of fourteen, and by 1910, three-quarters of American children were enrolled. Every state required pupils to complete primary school by 1918. However, educational possibilities were not equal across the country, with education spending in the southern regions being significantly lower.

Immigrants

In the post-Civil War era, probably less than 5% of American youths attended a public high school. However, there was an exponential development in secondary education from 1880 to 1924, accompanied by the entry of new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Secondary schools had over 200,000 pupils in 1890 and nearly 2,000,000 by 1920, representing an increase from 7% of the population aged 14 to 17 to more than 30%. Between 1890 and 1924, increasingly violent clashes erupted over the high school's function. The Committee of Ten, comprised of top American university academics, advocated in 1893 that public secondary schools emphasize liberal arts instruction. When the country was faced with how to Americanize millions of young people with roots in countries at war with the United States during World War I, the National Educational Association's Commission for the Reorganization of Secondary Education advocated for a more diverse education that included vocational and commercial fields.

Most urban schools were preparing for:

• College admission

• Commercial courses (mostly designed to train young women for office jobs),

• Vocational courses (industrial craft for men and household for women)

• General (which offered a diploma without any special training).

Around 9% of Americans had a high school diploma in 1910. This figure rose to 40% by 1935 and 50% by 1940, yet the rate of expansion is deceiving. Because there was no employment during the Great Depression, many boys and girls stayed in school. During the twentieth century, the percentage of teenagers who completed high school climbed from 6% to 85%. high schools offered four school streams by 1920.

Summary

Nowadays, American education is regarded as among the greatest in the world. Students typically attend 12 grades of study throughout the course of 12 calendar years of primary/elementary and secondary education before graduating and getting a diploma that allows them to apply to further education. Education is compulsory till the age of 16. (18 in some states). One of the fundamental goals of American public education is to offer equal access and opportunity for all boys and girls, including minority groups and the disabled. Furthermore, coeducation has a long history in public schools in the United States. Primary education lasts till the fifth grade, middle school or junior high school lasts from the sixth to the eighth grades, and secondary education lasts from the ninth to the twelfth grades.

References:

https://travel-in-time.org/puteshestviya-vo-vremeni/istoriya-obrazovaniya-v-ssha/. Accessed 27 Nov. 2022.

https://suny.buffalostate.edu/news/1871-2021-short-history-education-united-states. Accessed 27 Nov. 2022.

https://www.bloomberg.org/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAsoycBhC6ARIsAPPbeLv_cd7lkxpHIPNbkR7aQ28gsSOStWp622q75q12vHte4LYQJ7d4_ZIaAtH3EALw_wcB. Accessed 27 Nov. 2022.

Review Questions:

1. What was the influence of Great Britain on American education of that period?
2. Describe segregation of American education.
3. Influence of female teachers on American Education.
4. Describe urban school of that period.