History of Education in the US, part 2
A brief look at theory and practice in the 19th century.
Part 1 of this series covered education from ancient Greece and Rome through the 18th century.
19th century
1800-1840: Education in the US. In the early 19th c., public schooling still usually extends only to the 8th grade, esp. in rural areas. The curriculum still focuses on the "3 Rs" {1700-1800 Educ}. Schools are still mostly one room, with the teacher supervising and the older students teaching the younger. In the 1840 census, about 55% of children ages 5-15 are attending the equivalent of elementary or high school.
1801: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, How Gertrude Teaches Her Children. Pestalozzi, who is influenced by Rousseau {1762 Educ}, proposes a radical change in teaching children. Instead of forcing a child to memorize and recite, the teacher (who ideally should be formally trained) ought to show a child how to think, proceeding from observation to comprehension and from the familiar to the new, and making allowances for individual differences. Pestalozzi's motto: "Learning by head, hand, and heart" (intellectual, moral, and physical). Most of Pestalozzi's principles are still used in elementary education.
1806: Johann Herbart, Universal Pedagogy. Hebart argues for education that takes psychology into account: ideas in the mind are subconsciously gathered into groups (an "apperception mass"), so new ideas must be assimilated into that matrix of older ideas. He therefore advocates a 5-step system of pedagogy:
Preparation, relating the new material to previous material to get the student's interest;
Presentation of the new material, either by experience or concrete objects;
Association, comparison of the new idea with earlier material;
Generalization, giving other examples of the new material; and
Application, in which the student implements the new knowledge.
Hebart is one of the founders of theoretical pedagogy. His theories dominate Germany from the 1860s, and spread from there to the US. They are eventually superseded by Dewey's theories {1897 & 1916 Educ}.
1829: Louis Braille, Procedure for Writing Words, Music and Plainsong by Means of Points. Others had based writing for the blind on embossed versions of the alphabet. Braille (himself blind since age 3) devises an alphabet consisting of 1-6 raised dots per letter. By the 1870s it is widely adopted.
Braille, 1841 {1829 Educ}: Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us [the blind] if we are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals – and communication is the way this can be brought about. …
1837: Horace Mann is appointed 1st secretary of the newly est. Massachusetts Board of Education. Mann (influenced by German models) becomes the 1st US advocate of education that is universal, free, democratic, and non-sectarian. He leads a movement in Congress to give every American child an education at public expense. Among the ideas Mann promotes:
Children should be taught not by each other, as in one-room schools {1700-1800 Educ}, but by professionally trained teachers.
Children should be grouped into grades by age.
When students complete all courses, they should graduate, in a ceremony imitating college graduation.
The goal of schooling should be not merely to teach certain facts, but to make children better future citizens.
Massachusetts schools become a model for schools nationwide.
1844: Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel, Mother-Play and Nursery Songs. Inspired by Rousseau and Pestalozzi {1762 & 1801 Educ}, Froebel devises games for teaching children ages 4-6. He urges teachers to encourage children's self-expression rather than merely drilling them, and to be concerned about motivating children to learn, rather than teaching specific subjects. Froebel calls his school Kindergarten (“children’s garden”), suggesting that it is a place where the young can grow and flourish. The concept is soon introduced to England, France, Holland and the US. John Dewey adopts Froebel's principles {1897 Educ}.
1860s: By this time, 1 in 100 American adults has a college education. Those who plan to teach college most often study in Germany, which has Europe’s most advanced universities. For example: from 1830 to 1860, almost every young professor at Yale spends a year or more at a German university. As a result, American intellectuals are strongly influenced by German philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer {1781, 1788, 1790, 1807, & 1818 Phil}.
1860s-1900: Race in education. In the pre-Civil War South, many states est. free public elementary schools for white children. During Reconstruction {3/2/1867 US}, the federal government ests. schools for blacks, separate from those for whites. When Reconstruction ends, funds for black schools are cut back - a situation that eventually results in the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling {5/17/1954 US}.
1870-1900: Elementary and high-school education in the US. By 1870, 49% of public school students are girls. Also by 1870, every state has publicly funded elementary schools, many of which are controlled by local politicians who reward their supporters with school positions. In part to counter this, Progressives {1890s-1917 US} lobby for state-wide supervision of schools. State superintendents and boards of education often insist on credential-based hiring of teachers and statewide standardization of the curriculum. By 1900, the focus of education shifts from basic literacy and mathematics to skills needed in a modern industrial society {1894 Econ}.
1897: John Dewey’s "My Pedagogic Creed" is the 1st of numerous works by the leading educator of the Progressive Movement {1890s-1917 US}. Dewey is influenced by Rousseau {1762 Phil & 1762 Educ}, Bentham {1789 Econ}, Hegel {1807 Phil}, and William James {1899 Educ}, and studies under the founder of Pragmatism, Charles Peirce {1877-1878 Phil}. Metaphysically, Dewey argues that facts are neither absolutely real nor only in the mind: they are facts for a particular organism acting and adapting within a particular environment ("the facts of the case"). Epistemologically, he says ideas are useful tools, but are not tied to what is true or false; we judge their value by whether they explain the present and predict the future. Politically, Dewey leans toward socialism and communism. Pedagogically, he argues that the goal of education is to raise children who will meet the needs of a changing democratic society and will strive to achieve the greater good. Since we are all a product of our social surroundings, school should be a social experience. It should teach only what's practical, should allow children to choose their own paths, and should encourage active participation rather than passive (rote) learning. Dewey’s works are massively influential. See also his Democracy and Education {1916 Educ.}
Dewey, "My Pedagogic Creed" {1897 Educ}:
Article One. What Education Is. I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual's powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. ... I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. …
Article Five. The School and Social Progress. I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.
I believe that all reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.
I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.
I believe that this conception has due regard for both the individualistic and socialistic ideals. It is duly individual because it recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of right living. It is socialistic because it recognizes that this right character is not to be formed by merely individual precept, example, or exhortation, but rather by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results.
1899: William James, Talks to Teachers. James argues that the aim of education is to teach students how to fit into their social and physical world. James's theories are closely related to Dewey's {1897 Educ}.
William James, Talks to Teachers {1899 Educ}: You should regard your professional task as if it consisted chiefly and essentially in training the pupil to behavior; taking behavior, not in the narrow sense of his manners, but in the very widest possible sense, as including every possible sort of fit reaction on the circumstances into which he may find himself brought by the vicissitudes of life. …
In the last analysis [education] consists in the organizing of resources in the human being, of powers of conduct which shall fit him to his social and physical world. An 'uneducated' person is one who is nonplussed by all but the most habitual situations. On the contrary, one who is educated is able practically to extricate himself, by means of the examples with which his memory is stored and of the abstract conceptions which he has acquired, from circumstances in which he never was placed before. Education, in short, cannot be better described than by calling it the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior.
In tomorrow’s post: US education in the 20th & 21st centuries, including Montessori, more Dewey, Piaget, Dick and Jane, "New Math", the Dept. of Education, multiculturalism, CRT, and more.