Essay On American Education

In 1750, we see how most children in England did not go to school at all; only a very few could write. With only two universities in England, we see how many did not receive the required education. However, by 1900 we see how all of this changed. School was compulsory for all five to twelve year old, this meant that more people were able to read and write. With there being ten universities in England, we see how education was improving as time

In the colonial days of the United States, most children did not attend school. Instead, they worked on farms or learned a craft. Wealthy children may have attended private schools or had tutors, but children from poorer families did not have such opportunities. Many American reformers wanted to change this. They were impressed by a pamphlet published in 1807 by a British teacher, Joseph Lancaster.

In the North, only the rich could afford to send their children to a private school. In the early 1800s, only New England would allow free elementary school. Many wanted free education from tax dollars. They accepted three principles. From Chapter 8, “schools should be free….

Thanks to his efforts; Massachusetts founded the nation's first normal school. A normal school is a state-supported school for high school graduates to become teachers. Mary Lyon raised funds to open a women's college.

They believed children needed to be educated in order to read and fully understand the bible. Once the populations of settlers had grown they passed the Old Deluder Act. This Act states, “Every town of fifty or more households was to appoint one teacher from whom all children could receive instruction, and every town of one hundred house- holds or more was to maintain a grammar school with a teacher capable of preparing students for university-level learning”(Boyer,48). This act was the first step towards a public education system as well as helped established the colleges of Harvard and Yale. Young girls went to school to learn about house duties and how to be a wife while young boys went to school for grammar and writing.

Programs like this and a new desire for education, promised to bring much change to the current education system. A major theme of education during this time period was the expansion of education. While efforts were being made to expand the education system’s “audience”, efforts were also being made to expand schools westward. The government began surveying lands and setting up schools inside them. They wanted to spread education to the entire country.

In 1622, John Brinsley called getting an education at a university was a waste of money and said that the attendance of the universities did nothing to change a number of scholars and that they would return home… as indecent as when they went to the universities (Document 10). Also, it was viewed that going to school resulted in a decrease in physicality. By the end of the Renaissance, it was found that more workers were needed than scholars at this time and that being able to read and write was only important to a small amount of people (Document 10). Educational reformers wanted modifications that could go along with the uses of practical life, calling schools “diseased” are that they really didn’t need them. They maintained that education should prepare men to be workers and laborers.

Massachusetts reformer Horace Mann led the charge for the country's first statewide public school. Mann wrote that education “is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” He also said that universal education would allow the United States to maintain a democracy of all Americans, he thought, “must, if citizens of a Republic, understand something of the true nature and functions of the government under which they live.” The public school system became a reality and they were free too. Most young citizens can now go to school poverty free.

One problem still stood and that was that many children did not have any access to education. A Massachusetts lawyer by the name of Horace Mann, led movements to try to create new common schools for all children. Mann believed that available public education for children of every social class would revive social equality and give them an equal chance to excel in social mobility. These schools would also keep society in order by disciplining children and building their individual character and teaching them to obey authority. By 1860, with the help from generous labor unions, factory owners and middle-class reformers, every northern state had school systems for all children of every social

Women’s literacy rates were way behind the men’s until the 1800s, but most children still didn’t go to school past elementary school. Unsurprisingly, practically no slaves had any education whatsoever, aside from the occasional slave owner teaching their slave children to read and write. In 1636, Harvard, the first American college, was established, and more followed. By 1763, there were six colleges in operation in the colonies, with four of them specifically founded for the training of preachers. Even though most of these

In the Southern colonies, children usually started their education at home. (It was not super important to them). The distances between farms and plantations made town schools very hard to get to. Plantation owners regularly hired tutors or house maids to teach boys’ math, classical languages, science, geography, history, etiquette, and plantation management. When the boys had the opportunity to have an education outside of the home the schools were quite strict and often had much punishment for doing the wrong.

It was called The Common School Period because education transformed from a completely private, costly thing to a luxury that was available to the common masses. With public education, social class separation was not as extreme as it had been in the past, but still continued to occur in some areas. The people in the lower classes originally gained minimal instruction, such as learning how to read and write, calculate, and receive religious instruction, while the upper classes were more entitled to pursuing a higher education in secondary schools and even continue their schooling at the university level. Though some social class separation still lingered, education was made mostly to fit common standards. In 1837, Horace Mann, one of the great education reformers, created grade levels, common standards to reach those said grade levels, and mandatory attendance.

Along with changes within society, education experienced great changes as well. When World War I started, there was only about one million kids attending a high school. However, this number soared to over four million by 1926. With industry booming and the economy prospering, there was a need for higher skilled laborers. This is exactly what high schools became in the 1920’s, as they offered a big range of various courses for students who were interested in industrial jobs.

During the antebellum period of the United States, different policies and political agendas were laid out to create a country that aspired to be better than the one from which it claimed its independence. The discussion of education began then, in hopes to create a more nationalistic society and to instill individual thought so that tyranny would never be able to take control. Education for who though, is where things began to get a little blurry. Most education in this time period began as disorganized and personal. Studying abroad was becoming unpatriotic—why send your children to other countries, when they could stay in the States so that they could learn to love their own country.

There is a third reason which is the Most important reason, is to get a great picture of the cultural diversity of the United States of America. Knowledge of others, their cultures, their sciences and way of life, is useful for learning about a new culture. Some cultures have good qualities and bad recipes, or perhaps do not fit the nature of our lives. For example, my presence in America has made me learn a lot of American cultures that if I find them in my country and may be useful to me or in raising my children such as opening the door to the person walks behind me, honestly I like this behavior which I miss this in my country. In general, the idea of quoting the culture that suits our societies may help us to develop from the reality of our lives.