Education

Overview

Traditional one room school house

Horace Mann

     A tax-supported primary school was unheard of during these times. Many saw this as a threat to the nation. An uneducated vote was a dangerouse vote. The idea of a tax funded education system wasn't popular amongst the southern states that based their economy and lifestyles around agriculture. The famed free schools, with their one room, one teacher and often eight different grades became the norm of the education system. With poor trained and poor tempered male teachers, school was often focused more on punishment than education. The curriculum was poor, usually focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Change was overly needed. Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, Horace Mann, campaigned for better school houses, longer school terms, higher paid teachers, and an expanded curriculum. Although this influence many states, education remained an expensive luxury. Blacks were forbidden to recieve instruction in reading and writing, even if they were free. The first glimpse of aid in education was improved text books by Noah Webster. Webster was seen as the "Schoolmaster of the Republic" and his dictionary helped standardize American language. Higher Education started to grow. The first state-supported universities popped up in the south like the University of Virginia which was largely founded by Thomas Jefferson. Education for women was looked down upon in this society. Woman were to be the homemaker not college students. Emma Willard established the troy female seminary in 1821 opening the doorway for other schools to start excepting female and male students. Soon many more schools would follow in the footsteps of Willard. Adults who looked for more knowledge looked to private subscription libraries or tax-supported ibraries. The lyceum lecture association gave traveling lectures on the platforms of science literature, and moral philosophy. 

Essential Question

Describe the cause for the most important American reform movements of the period identifying which were the most successful and why?

     The education reform was the most important because without a well educated population a country ablsoutley can not advance and compete against other nations. This reform first started on the idea that "An uneducated vote is a dangerous vote". This showed that many people in our country did not want unthought out votes going to someone that wasnt the right man for our country. With this sparked the idea to better the grade schools with nicer houses, longer terms, higher paid teachers, and a better curriculum. Soon these ideas caught on in higher education and women joined in on the cause. This reform was very successful in bettering our education not only for the men in our society but also the women who traditionally never recieved much education. America was becoming a Knowledge power house.

Connection

Recently Michelle Obama created a school lunch program to bring healthier options and smaller portion sizes to the kids of america. This was used to fight childhood obesity. This reform on the public schools lunch system relates to the education reform by trying to better america by starting at the bottom of the pyramid. If you start out by helping the kids, as they grow older they will be better fit or educated adults. Also with colleges doing so with each reform, the older students are also benefiting from this. Each were a reform to better the education system. One directly to the education the other to feeding these educated people.