Brief History of K-12 Schooling in America - Free Educational videos for Students in K-12

Brief History of K-12 Schooling in America - By Lumos Learning

Transcript


00:03	in this video . I want to talk briefly about
00:05	the history of American K 12 schools , So I'm
00:07	going to go pretty fast , going to speak in
00:09	a lot of generalities . If people want specifics ,
00:12	I have a reference list at the end of kind
00:14	of how I prepare these talks , so I'm going
00:17	to break it up into three rough phase of the
00:19	development . First is the Colonial and early American schools
00:22	. Second is the common school era , and third
00:24	is a consolidation era . And really , the story
00:27	goes essentially from less standardized to more standardized in the
00:31	early American Republic . And even before it was really
00:34	left to the colonies of the states to figure out
00:36	education . And most of them just kind of deferred
00:38	it to the districts in the townships . So really
00:41	, people were kind of on their own and thinking
00:43	about how they wanted to educate kids . Next is
00:45	the common school era . This is where reformers like
00:48	Chorus Man and Henry Barnard started developing what we would
00:51	now call public schools . But we were then calling
00:53	common schools because we wanted kids to go in common
00:57	to the same schools . These were small attendance was
01:00	not compulsory . It generally wasn't fully tax supported by
01:04	the consolidation era . We see more compulsory schools .
01:07	We see schools coming , tax supported , and we
01:09	see these common schools expanding out and becoming larger and
01:13	more people using them . This is why I call
01:15	it the consolidation era , and then districts get bigger
01:18	and the instruction gets more standardized , etcetera . But
01:21	it's really the story from less standardization , two more
01:23	standardization . So the early colonies and states , the
01:28	United States was plural . It wasn't singular , so
01:30	it's not . The United States is a great place
01:32	to live . It's the United States are a great
01:34	place to great places to live . And you weren't
01:37	really a U . S citizen . You were more
01:39	like a Pennsylvanian or New Jersey and or North Carolinian
01:43	. And all this is to say that different states
01:46	and different areas did it very differently , So there
01:49	wasn't really any unification between the states . In fact
01:53	, most states really deferred to the districts , and
01:56	most districts and townships basically still said , Well ,
01:59	you guys are on your own . Do it .
02:01	Do whatever you want for education . So some townships
02:05	like those in New England , the New England areas
02:07	, um had a more formal approach . They would
02:10	often take town money , pull it together and create
02:14	schools really one room schoolhouses that people could go to
02:17	, uh , usually for a discounted rate . So
02:20	the state , or really , the township would subsidize
02:23	tuition . But people generally still paid tuition what are
02:26	called rape bills to go to those schools . Or
02:29	, if you could afford to go somewhere else ,
02:31	you might do that . You might go to an
02:33	academy if you could afford it . Those were more
02:37	, I guess , systematic in their approach to instruction
02:39	. If you were poor , you might go to
02:41	a charity school . That was a school that was
02:43	supported by a church , and we usually teach basics
02:46	of reading and maybe mathematics . Combined with religious instruction
02:51	. You might even go to what's called a dame
02:52	. School , which is usually a female , would
02:56	open up her house to take on kids in the
02:58	school , and it was more like daycare . But
03:00	there was some kind of remedial instruction involved . So
03:03	here is an advertisement from a really early American school
03:07	that basically consisted of a person opening up a school
03:11	in his house , and you can see that tuition
03:13	is $5 . I imagine that's $5 for the entire
03:16	bit of instruction , and he would teach such things
03:19	as arithmetic , grammar and geography So you can get
03:23	a sense that , really , even though the New
03:25	England states had common schools to some small degree ,
03:28	it was really left up to individual families because there
03:31	were no laws saying You have to go to common
03:33	schools and the the mid Atlantic states did things a
03:37	little bit differently . They would often pool township money
03:40	together , and instead of creating a school that everyone
03:43	can go to divvy up that money so that especially
03:46	poor families could afford some sort of private school ,
03:49	and the South didn't really do much of anything ,
03:51	mostly because it was really agrarian and very rural .
03:54	So it would have been really hard to get any
03:57	school anywhere where a lot of people could go .
04:01	But the moral here is that states and really townships
04:04	kind of did their own thing , and you just
04:07	got the education that suited you that you wanted and
04:09	that you can afford . So here is an excerpt
04:13	from a book called Confessions of a Schoolmaster from 18
04:16	39 . This is a book that was written by
04:19	a person who started teaching in schools in in the
04:22	early 18 hundreds , and this gives us an insight
04:24	into what schools , especially one room schoolhouses , looked
04:27	like at the time . So , he says ,
04:29	among 35 or 40 pupils , I had three or
04:31	four who came to learn the alphabet . These were
04:34	seated in the lower seats , usually near the middle
04:36	of the room , and during the first hour and
04:38	a half of the day , they were destitute of
04:40	any employment . So what do we gather from this
04:42	quote ? Well , first of all , we gather
04:44	that different kids kind of showed up on a different
04:46	day , and this teacher only had 35 or 40
04:49	pupils on a given day . Remember , education was
04:52	not compulsory in the early 18 hundreds , so it
04:55	was not at all uncommon for some people to show
04:59	up one day not to show up the next day
05:01	, show up for three days in a row and
05:02	then not show up for two days After that .
05:05	Um , really , the teacher got to school and
05:08	didn't really know what kids were going to be there
05:10	. That day , and there were some books in
05:12	the school and the teacher would instruct you based on
05:15	where he thought you were , and in some sense
05:17	is based on what you came to school thinking that
05:20	you needed or really that your family thought you needed
05:23	the other thing we get from this is that really
05:26	? There was a mixed age group of students .
05:28	There is no such thing as grade levels , but
05:30	what most teachers did to kind of put similar students
05:33	together is , they would put maybe the best students
05:37	in the front of the room . The the younger
05:39	students may be in the back of the room who
05:41	needed more remedial instruction and kind of divide the room
05:44	that way . That way he could instruct groups of
05:47	students at a time . But even here you can
05:50	see the dilemma . Is your teaching all of the
05:52	students of very mixed ability at one time ? So
05:55	anything you're teaching some people might need and other people
05:58	kind of have to tune out . It's a really
06:00	hard job for a teacher , which is why ,
06:03	starting with the common school air , there was an
06:05	attempt to try to standardize a little bit of the
06:08	education , so let's go there . So the common
06:11	school era we can get to roughly 18 40 .
06:14	And the big name here many of you are familiar
06:16	with it is Horace Mann , who was the secretary
06:20	of the Board of Education in Massachusetts . There's also
06:23	Henry Barnard , who is doing the same job in
06:25	Connecticut and some other folks , and they started thinking
06:28	it would be really great if we could somewhat systematize
06:32	this system because the one room school house is really
06:34	informal . The teacher is usually just whoever is an
06:37	educated person that's willing to work for a certain sum
06:40	of money , and it's okay you're hired . Teach
06:42	, however you think is best , which is potentially
06:45	unfair because different students at different schools in different areas
06:49	now get different treatment . So Huisman and the others
06:52	dream was , Why don't we create something that's a
06:55	little bit more systematic ? And the first order of
06:58	business was to get more people attending the common schools
07:02	, which were the one room schoolhouses . So they
07:06	did this in a few ways . Number one .
07:07	They pushed for more tax support for education . Remember
07:11	, students are still paying tuition , even at public
07:13	schools called rate bills , and they , first of
07:16	all , made moves to abolish rate bills and make
07:18	it so that anyone could attend these common schools completely
07:21	for free . Another thing they did is they tried
07:24	to professionalize the teaching force . So they tried to
07:27	compile statistics on what teaching methods worked so that teachers
07:32	to be hired would have to kind of be fluent
07:34	in those methods , usually graduating from teachers , colleges
07:37	that were then called normal schools . Another thing they
07:40	try to do , especially now that more students are
07:42	attending these schools is try to make them instead of
07:45	one room like this picture indicates , try to make
07:48	them multiple room so that it's at least possible to
07:51	teach some people in one room maybe the students who
07:54	need lower reading instruction versus other students in another room
07:58	who might need higher reading instruction . So that was
08:01	another development , so the school's got a little bit
08:03	more sophisticated . Another thing they did was they started
08:07	to have success in passing compulsory education laws . At
08:12	this point , students attended if they wanted to ,
08:14	and if their families really didn't need them to stay
08:17	home and work . But states started passing compulsory education
08:22	laws , starting in 18 51 with Massachusetts and ending
08:25	in 1917 with Mississippi . I'm recording this in 2019
08:30	. So if you really , really think about it
08:32	, the last state in the union to pass compulsory
08:35	education was only 100 . And two years ago ,
08:38	that's pretty interesting . Another thing , of course ,
08:41	that I mentioned was that education became entirely state funded
08:45	. So this really increased dramatically . The number of
08:47	people who attended schools , first of all , because
08:50	by law you have to attend school . And second
08:52	of all the choices now between a school that I
08:54	can attend for free the common school versus the school
08:57	that I have to pay tuition for , which is
09:00	the private school , maybe the academy or something else
09:03	. So most people started to choose public schools ,
09:09	and this leads us to the consolidation era . So
09:14	it wasn't good enough to slightly formalize schools . At
09:17	this point , a lot more students are starting to
09:19	attend to the common schools for reasons that I just
09:21	mentioned . So now we get ideas about well ,
09:25	hey , it's maybe if we want schools with a
09:28	lot of people attending them , we not only need
09:31	bigger schools , but we need more systematic schools .
09:33	We need rooms that are divided so that maybe 20
09:36	or 30 students at a time of a similar age
09:39	grouping can receive the same instruction from one teacher in
09:42	this room and then moved to another room to receive
09:44	instruction in another area from another teacher . Uh ,
09:47	so maybe the nine and 10 year olds are working
09:49	together , and the 12 and 13 year olds are
09:51	working together . So this is really a long way
09:54	from the confessions of a schoolmaster expert excerpt , where
09:58	everyone is receiving instruction by the same teacher in the
10:02	same room . Another thing that happened during this consolidation
10:06	era is called scientific management . The idea here is
10:10	that there is a way to design curriculum and pedagogy
10:15	the way we teach students in a systematic and they
10:18	thought , scientific way . So instead of hiring a
10:21	teacher and saying , teach the way you think is
10:23	best , teach what you think is best to teach
10:26	how you think it's best . The idea was ,
10:28	we want to create a curriculum and pedagogical methods that
10:33	are designed by experts , and these experts will tell
10:37	teachers and schools how they should be teaching now .
10:39	In one way , this sounds really horrible because no
10:42	longer is the teacher really in charge of what they're
10:44	teaching . They're teaching someone else's curriculum , using someone
10:47	else's methods designed by so called experts . But on
10:51	the other hand , it makes a lot of sense
10:53	because if you want students at different schools to really
10:56	receive essentially the same quality and type of instruction ,
11:00	Uh , this is a really good way to do
11:02	it . You want to standardize , and hopefully ,
11:04	if you standardize , you want quote unquote experts to
11:07	be the ones guiding that standardization . Here's another picture
11:12	that just illustrates one of the changes from the one
11:15	room schoolhouse to a more modern desk . So this
11:18	is a picture of a one room schoolhouse desk on
11:20	the left . It's bolted to the floor . Students
11:23	sit in a place that's kind of pre chosen ,
11:25	and you can't really move where the seat is .
11:27	And then they created more modern desks , and they
11:29	decided to not built them to the floor . This
11:32	would give teachers and schools a little bit greater autonomy
11:35	in figuring out how many desks each room needs ,
11:37	because you can move desks from one room to another
11:40	, and consequences also gave teachers a little bit more
11:43	freedom in terms of how they organize their room .
11:45	So that's interesting , because on one hand you have
11:47	this push towards standardization with scientific management and scientifically designed
11:51	curriculum . But on the other hand , you now
11:54	have greater freedom of teachers to be able to move
11:56	desks around to where they think the desks should go
12:01	. A few other things that happened in the consolidation
12:03	era . First of all , the early 19 hundreds
12:05	high schools became widely attended . High schools existed before
12:09	1900 but their attendance was really the way colleges today
12:12	. It was for the quote unquote learned professions ,
12:15	and if you were going to go into one of
12:17	the learned professions , you might go to high school
12:19	. But otherwise there was really no need . You
12:21	could get several years of instruction in a regular school
12:23	and do most particular jobs . But in the 19
12:27	hundreds , especially as compulsory education became more prevalent ,
12:31	you started to see more people attending high schools ,
12:33	and then college in some ways became the new finishing
12:36	school . In the 19 tens , IQ tests were
12:39	introduced in school , so we had this idea that
12:42	while education is being standardized , we also had an
12:45	increasing sensitivity to the idea that different students might demand
12:49	different tracks of instruction . So there may be students
12:52	on the lower end of the educational spectrum who might
12:55	require an education that's catered to a lower level ,
12:59	whereas students on an upper level we might call them
13:02	honors are gifted . Today might require a different kind
13:05	of education and take tests were starting to be used
13:08	to help sort students into those groups . Also ,
13:11	middle schools became a thing we finally realized , discovered
13:15	or invented , depending on your perspective , the idea
13:17	of adolescence . It's not quite childhood . It's not
13:20	quite adulthood . So we finally gave middle school students
13:24	adolescents a separate school of their own . So grades
13:27	one through five , we're usually primary school . Middle
13:30	school was six through eight . And then , you
13:32	know , uh , nine through 12 would be high
13:36	school in 1926 . Finally , the S A T
13:39	is introduced for college preparation . And if there are
13:42	any high school teachers watching this , you probably can
13:44	figure out pretty quickly that the the S a T
13:47	as a high as a college entrance exam really changed
13:51	how high schools had to teach because now , in
13:53	some ways , they had to teach to prepare people
13:55	who wanted to go to college for college . So
13:58	all of these are kind of ways to standardize ,
14:00	even while differentiating the approach . And that's the result
14:04	of the the consolidation era , and that brings us
14:07	to now . So if you think about the one
14:09	room schoolhouse versus the schools that were used to ,
14:11	we've come a long way in a short amount of
14:15	time , and it's really a story of not a
14:18	lot of centralization at the beginning , two more centralisation
14:22	at the end . So here the resources that I
14:24	use if you want any further readings , I would
14:26	recommend that you check out some of those , yeah
00:0-1	.

Summarizer

DESCRIPTION:

In this video, I give a very brief history of K-12 schooling in America, how we progressed from one-room school houses, to 'common schools" to the more standardized public (and private) schools we see today.

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