ipl-logo

Primary Education In The United States

1818 Words8 Pages

Education in the United States has a long past. For the purpose of this essay, primary education, and its history will be further analyzed from the perspective of Marx’s. First, though, a brief history of the implementation of primary education will be reviewed. Starting in the late 1700s, which was during the beginning of industrialization in the U.S. Thomas Jefferson began to push for education for all citizens, saying “general education will enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom” (Kurlaender 2015). It is important to note that at this time settlers had not started moving westward and most of the citizens were living on the east coast. Jefferson felt that the knowledge that the citizens gained from …show more content…

Marx’s main reasoning for this is that he believed that the ownership of the means of production created two classes (bourgeoisie & proletariat), and the bourgeoisie exploited these proletariats. (Finnigan, 10/20/15). In Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx writes, “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed…” (Calhoun, Gerteis, Moody, Pfaff, and Virk 2012: 156) This quote from Marx can be applied to the early years of education. Starting in the 1700s education had the main goal of helping, men, pursue the goal of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As Jefferson stated, be it rich or poor that was the goal of all education (Carpenter 2013). Jefferson then proposes the two track system which obviously attempts to clear the poor from the education system at an early stage of education. If Marx were to assess this he would say that the oppressors at this time where the wealthy who were in charge of education during the time period and teachers who had the ability to choose who would move on to the next part of schooling. While the students from the poor families may have been equally as smart, those in charge of education choose not to send students on, or through challenging tasks weeded them out of the system. Marx would have seen these students has the oppressed. From a viewpoint of Marx, these students would be seen as being oppressed because the wealthy are who had control of education, just like the wealthy or bourgeois is who had ownership of the means of production. It would be difficult to assess education through the means of Smith. In terms of production Smith believed that the countries that were wealthy had good means of division of labor. Division of labor increased productivity and was a positive outcome (Finigann

Show More
Related

  • Benjamin Barber's Argument In 'America Skips School'

    904 Words  | 4 Pages

    Barber uses logic in arguing for mass public education, quoting two of the most influential founders of our democracy, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Barber knows that in a democracy, the people decide what is best for the nation, and if the nation is uneducated they will make the wrong decisions. Jefferson and Adams warn about those “tyrannies” of an uneducated society, which is why Barbers claims are truthful that education allows people to “think critically and act with deliberation”(6). To answer the question of how a society achieves equality and opportunity for its citizens, one should totally disregard William A. Henry’s callous remarks and illegitimate claims in his essay, “In Defense of Elitism.” His reasoning for selective educational opportunities tries to divide our country, which will discriminate individuals, amplify class

    Read More

  • Comparing The Views Of Karl Marx And Andrew Carnegie

    1777 Words  | 8 Pages

    In Smith’s theory, he focused on the individual, but Marx preferred to pay much more attention on a specific social class. Marx says, “The distinguishing feature of Communism is no the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property (Marx, 1848).” For example, proletariat needed to build a new social class through revolution, and abolition of private property needed to be established in society. Marx had also offered other policies that helped to get rid of the different class distinctions between bourgeois and proletariat and distribute the wealth equally such as “abolition of all right of inheritance, exclusion of monopoly, equal liability of all to labor, and a more equable distribution of the population over the country (Marx, 1848).” These policies not only prohibited one to hold certain power and rights to rule others, but they also promoted the equal distribution of wealth in

    Read More

  • Temperance Movement In The 1800s

    780 Words  | 4 Pages

    The mid to early 1800s marked a dynamic period in America’s history. Powerful movements such as the Market revolution the Second Great Awakening gave way to new moral and socio-economic beliefs. These new found beliefs fueled a series of reform movement and earned this era the name the Age of Reforms. Although movements such as temperance restricted democracy in the US, to a greater extent, reform movements such as public education, women’s rights, and abolition expanded democracy by giving power and basic rights to women, slaves, and the lower class.

    Read More

  • Henry David Thoreau: Transcendentalism In Public Schools In The 19th Century

    1122 Words  | 5 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau is one of the most influential, and most brilliant people to ever walk on the face of the earth. He embodies the transcendentalist ideas that many of the most famous writers in the world share. Transcendentalism is the philosophy of looking at every person as an individual and how important and divine each soul truly is. The way that the world in the middle 1800’s, the time in which Thoreau was in his prime for writing, was that a person learned from his encounters and how that individual reacted to it. Transcendentalists believed in the spirituality of the world in order learn new things: “They rejected the widely accepted notion that man’s knowledge came primarily through the senses.

    Read More

  • Essay On Antebellum Reform

    1216 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • John Taylor Gatto: Against Mandatory Public Schools

    581 Words  | 3 Pages

    The United States’ school system is based on compulsory education laws which required children from 6 to 16 years of age to assist public or private school, for a certain number of years (“Compulsory Education”, 2015). In the past, these laws were put in effect to increase literacy rates and to avoid child labor practice. Unfortunately, there are many people against mandatory public education in America. This is the case of a former New York City teacher, John Taylor Gatto, who in his article “Against School”, he expresses why he believes that the school system is ineffective in helping students to develop their full potential.

    Read More

  • The Secret To Fixing Bad Schools Summary

    1033 Words  | 5 Pages

    Mann saw children forced into working in the factories so they can earn enough money to help their family. Mann states “universal education can counter work this tendency” Horace Mann’s idea of this free education for all will create opportunities for anyone of any socioeconomic class to rise up leading to a population of literate people which will “increase the intellectual consistency”. This will bring young children out of the harsh working conditions of factories and placing them in schools which will lead them to a more intellectual future. We can see the wonders of education in more recent narratives by David L. Kirp and Antonio Alvarez. In David L. Kirp’s article “The Secret to Fixing Bad Schools”, the reader finds out that Union City is a “poor community” with an “unemployment rate 60 percent higher than the national average” Union City is a great example of how a poverty-stricken community can still achieve high education success rates.

    Read More

  • Horace Mann Report No. 12 Summary

    1220 Words  | 5 Pages

    Education is the great equalizer, the balance wheel of society, and can greatly benefit the poor who often would otherwise resort to agrarianism. He also seems to scoff at the idea that some are poor because others are rich and says that with education we can create new wealth. For in the creation of wealth and wealthy people, he goes on to mention, intelligence is the grand condition. Mann’s last main idea is that education is essential to a successful Republican society. He discusses how in a Republican government, legislation is a mirror which reflects the moral character of the constituents and that without an educated government, the results would be fatal.

    Read More

  • Education During The Antebellum Era

    1613 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Education In The Second Great Awakening

    1330 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The History Of Class Conflicts In Karl Marx And Engels

    764 Words  | 4 Pages

    Karl Marx’s class theory lies upon the premise that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." He meant by this that ever since the inception of modern human society, people have been always divided into classes which are in conflict with each other due to class interests. An argument against class interests is that they are not given ab initio, they arise out of exposure of people occupying different social positions in varying social contexts. Karl Marx and Engels divided the masses into three broad classes, the proletariats, the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie.

    Read More

  • Hidden Intellectualism Summary

    762 Words  | 4 Pages

    Seika McKee Dickens ENGL 1113 1 OCT. 2015 The Hidden Education in the Poor Perhaps one of the most valuable opportunities in life is education. In a conversation between Adam Howard, associate professor of education at Antioch College, and Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, in “Where Are The Poor Students,” some subjects at hand are the availability or unavailability of opportunities, the missed value of education, and the irrelevant comparison of test scores directed towards the poor students.

    Read More

  • Reform Movements Of The Progressive Era

    254 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reform movements of the Progressive Era changed the importance of America in every other aspect of life. Starting from birth control reforms to government reform and many others who’d brought a new wave of prosperity in this country. I would like to share my views about the Educational reforms of progressive era, because the progressives of that time worked really hard to reform and rejuvenate the school, college at council level. The most important fact of this era was the expansion in number of schools and student, especially in the fast flourishing metropolitan cities. Furthermore in the late 19th century most southern children especially living in rural areas received more than an elementary education.

    Read More

  • Social Classes In The Middle Ages Essay

    555 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today in the US, everyone has the right to be educated regardless of their social class. Even the lower classes can get an education, whereas in the Middle Ages, the peasants were not allowed to be

    Read More

  • Karl Marx And Class Conflict

    1486 Words  | 6 Pages

    Class conflict, Marx believed, was what encouraged the evolution of society. To quote Marx himself, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one

    Read More

More about Primary Education In The United States

Open Document