Who Should Control Education: The Common School Era

1. Who Should Control Education: The Common School Era

2. Colonial Era • Demographics • Attitude toward children • Education (grammar schooling) • Education (college)

3. Drawing of Harvard College, circa 1767

4. Revolutionary Era • Ideology • Faith in reason • Natural law (deism) • Nationalism

5. Revolutionary Era Education • Jeffersonian ideals • Meritocracy • Plan for popular education-4 tiers • His legacy

6. Common School Era • Demographics • Ideology

8. One Room School House (KS)

9. One Room School House (MD)

10. Common School Movement • School structure • Teaching • Overarching goals: moral training, discipline, patriotism, mutual understanding, formal equality, and cultural assimilation • (development of high schools)

11. Questions for Discussion • By which secondary source-Kaestle or Bowles and Gintis-are you persuaded? • What do you think of the arguments for localism or centralization? Where do you stand? • What do you think about the notion of the “common school?” What would it look like? • Where do you stand: are children property of the state or of their parents? (Kaestle 158-159) • What is the hidden curriculum and how is it transmitted to students in today’s schools?

12. The Progressive Era I:Pedagogical Progressivism

13. Characterization of the Era • Urbanization • Immigration • Ideology • Education

14. General Characterization of Progressive Education • Built on the “new” psychology • Traditional classical curriculum should be replaced with a varied curriculum • Learning should be based on activities not rote memorization • Primary aim of schooling is to help solve society’s problems

15. New Educational Goals • Social stability • Employable skills • Equal educational opportunity • Meritocracy

16. George Counts (1889-1974) • Influenced by Dewey • Envisioned a ‘political’ role for teachers • Accused of being a communist • Critical of Progressive Education

17. John Dewey (1859-1952) • The ‘father’ of pedagogical progressivism • Disagreed with Counts; believed that schools should produce reformers not reform society directly

18. Dewey’s ideas • Schools kill curiosity and social interaction • Schools should be laboratories for democracy • Education THROUGH the vocations not FOR the vocations

19. Questions for Discussion • What do you think the role of the school should be in society? Should they lead or follow? • What of the role of the teacher? • What do you think of the concept of indoctrination (a la Counts)? • Do you have a prescription for achieving the “good” society?

20. The Progressive Era II: Administrative Progressivism/Social Efficiency

21. Alfred Binet • Paper and pencil test • Series of short tasks according to child’s age • Related to everyday problems • Didn’t rely on learned skills like math or reading

22. Binet’s cautions • Scores are a practical device; they do not buttress any theory of intellect • Scale is a rough empirical guide for identifying learning disabled kids NOT for ranking normal children • Low scores shall not be used to mark children as innately incapable

23. Enter Lewis Terman • Adopts Binet’s test but alters it to sort, classify, and test all American school children • Intelligence Quotient born in 1916

24. Impact of the IQ • What began as a way to identify individual children with special needs became a means for ordering groups • Said to test inherent/innate ability • Immigration policy took cues from results

25. Progressive Education (review) • Replace classical curriculum with a varied curriculum based on kids’ interests • Learning should be based on activities not rote memorization • Schools should help solve society’s problems • Seeking social stability, employable skills, and equal educational opportunity

26. Consequences for Course Taking

27. Questions for Discussion • Should we have a core curriculum? What should it be? • What are the merits of a differentiated curriculum? • How much differentiation is too much?

28. Language Issues:Does an American Have to Speak English? Ingles Englisch 英語 Inglese إنجليزي

29. 1930s Court Cases • Salvatieera v. Independent School District (TX), 1930 • Court Oks separation on the basis of English language handicaps • Alvarez v. Lemon Grove School District (CA), 1931 • classifying Mexicans as Indian • School board: separate education best for learning language and assimilation (and gender fears) • San Diego court: school board can’t separate ALL kids

30. 1940s Court Cases • Mendez v. Westminster (CA), 1947 • School board says MA kids happier in separate classrooms/schools • Federal District court disagrees (they were separated for wrong reasons: race) • Delgado v. Bastrop (TX), 1948 • Parents continued Salvatierra fight

31. 1970s Court Cases • Cisneros v. Corpus Christi District (TX), 1970 • Mexican Americans classified as such (brown not white) • Lau v. Nichols, 1974 • Question: equal or equitable treatment required by schools? • (critical mass necessary) • Made language a civil rights issue

32. Questions for Discussion • How do we reconcile American-ness with diversity? (umum and pluribus) • How do we reconcile ethnicity with American-ness? • What do you make of the relationship between language and citizenship? • Is it the school’s role to teach/help maintain culture?

33. Religion and Education

34. Colonial/Revolutionary/Common School Eras and Religion • Protestants outnumbered other immigrants • Jefferson’s Bill for Religious Freedom • Demographic changes with increases in Irish Catholic immigration

35. Catholicism Catholics need the pope while Protestants rely on bible as guide A danger to the state Sample texts Judaism A religion or a race? Associated with greed (contrast with Franklin) College admissions becomes HUGE issue Religion in Textbooks

36. Court cases • State v. John Scopes (Monkey Trial) (TN), 1925 • Evolution v. creationism • Science in the classroom • Inherit the Wind, 1960 • Pierce v. Society of Sisters (OR), 1925 • Compulsory education=public education • Anti-Catholic intentions

37. Questions for Discussion • How does religion fit in today’s public schools? • What do you think of the use of school property for religious purposes? • How should science classes be handled (evolution/creationism/ punctuated equilibrium)?

38. Education for Liberation

39. Paulo Freire • Worked with rural poor adults • Professor, government employee, and community worker • Wanted to extend literacy and democracy

40. Highlander Folk School, Miles Horton • Founded as adult education center; aim was to build a progressive labor movement • Changed focus in 1953 to Civil Rights Movement and voting rights

41. Early Desegregation Decisions • Gaines v. Canada (MO), 1938 • Sipuel v. Board of Regents (OK), 1948 • McLaurin v. Board of Regents (OK), 1950 • Sweatt v. Painter (TX), 1950

42. The Brown Decision, 1954 • Briggs v. Elliott (SC), 1950 • Belton v. Gebhart; Bulah v. Gebhart (DE), 1951 • Brown v. Board (KS), 1951 • Davis v. Prince Edward County SB (VA), 1951 • Bowling v. Sharpe (DC), 1952

43. Brief Mississippi History • Black statistics • White reaction to Brown decision • (SNCC and sit-ins) • Summer 1964: Freedom Summer

44. Questions for Discussion • What do you make of Freire and SNCC in light of previous authors with regard to the purpose of education? • Would working within the system or outside the system be best? • Does this influence your opinion on who is “qualified” to teach?

45. Who Should Control Education Revisited: The 1960s and 1970s

46. What is Black Power • The launching of a movement (1966) • Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America

47. Black Access to Higher Ed • Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Higher Education Act of 1965 • Campus-based affirmative action • Numbers in colleges

48. Curricular Changes • Black Studies • Community control • Multicultural/Afro-centric Education

49. Questions for Discussion • How much control should a community have? • Hiring teachers? • Curriculum? • Educational policy? • What is a ‘qualified’ teacher?

50. Contemporary Debates over the Curriculum in a Multicultural Society