The History of Education – Post Civil War to Present

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

The End of Slavery and the Beginning of Reconstruction – Important Legislation

•13th Amendment

•14th Amendment

•15th Amendment

 

Amendments changed race relations by:

·         Legally ending slavery

·         Defining citizenship

·         Forbidding states to deny the right to vote

 

Importance of the Freedman’s Bureau:

•Provided food, medicine, and seed

•Secured legal rights for freed slaves

•Establish and extended education

–4,000 primary schools

–74 Normal Schools

–61 industrial-based schools

 

Black Codes and the NAACP

 

Beginning of Educational and Social Reform Efforts

 

•1857 – NEA pushes for the establishment of the Department of Education

–Established in 1867

–Henry Barnard, Commissioner

 

•Beginning of 20th Century

–Sustained attack on public schools

–Laggards in Our Schools – 1909 (Leonard Ayres) – Report indicates the focused attention on the “academically gifted student” to the exclusion of the slow or average within public schools

 

 

 

 

 

 

Schools Begin to Mirror Society

 

Societal Issues and Concerns:

•Anti-evolution crusade

•Anti-immigration movements

•Organized campaigns against Roman Catholics

•Anti-Semitism

•Schools fuel the development of public labor by:

–Protecting children

–Preparing them for the labor force

–Keeping children out of the labor market

 

Influence of Philanthropy:

•Frederic Taylor’s studies – scientific management

–School board members

–Business leaders

–Educational specialization

•Catell and Binet

–“Mental Tests” for intelligence and beginning of “tracking” students

 

Increasing Value of Education

–Metropolitan Museum of Art

–Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

–Library of Congress

–Foundations – Carnegie, Ford, Mellon

–Bill Gates – “The Road Ahead”

–Gates Foundation

 

The Influence of Mass Media

•Mass-produced, low cost reading material

•Hearst and Pulitzer

–Shaped American opinion on education

–View of foreigners

–Newspapers and magazines rivaled schools as chief instrument of dissemination of ideas

-Negative public view of nation’s schools

 

Impact of Federal Government Involvement

–1950’s Supreme Court ruling on school segregation

–1960’s Schools become battlegrounds in the war on poverty and racial equality

–Later renamed Improving American Schools/IASA in 1994

–Changed center of policy-making power from states and localities to federal government

–Provided funds to alleviate poverty