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Author Archives: heathergil1
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Chapter 10
By the end of the nineteenth century, most educational reforms were about trying to make “separate but equal” schools for rich and poor work well. The results of these efforts have been discouraging. New schools and institutions looked at ways to integrate public school by economic status through public school choice. At the higher education level, they examined ways to open the doors of selective and non-selective institutions to students of modest means that prepared students for their professions. Issues like meritocracy, the reduction of public control, and the development of standardized tests were of a major concern in this chapter.
Meritocracy was established in schools as a social system that gave opportunities and advantages to people on the basis of their abilities and merit rather than their economic wealth or power. One of the issues with this concept was that once a person is put into their position due to their merit, then wouldn’t there still be some sort of confining wall separating people due to the higher or lower status the person holds. This is similar to the ideology behind standardized tests where students are all given the same test bearing in mind that all the students are getting the same quality education. The problem is that there are multiple reasons as to why a student doesn’t do well on a standardized test including the fact that not all instructors are good teachers and that not all students are great test takers. So here we have the notion of meritocracy and standardized tests still socially confining people in society. Is it possible for people to have equal opportunities? Or has our previous problems in history produced by inequality continue to affect us forever?
Chapter 8
At the start of the 1880’s till the early 1960’s there was a great increase of immigrants from Europe, Asia, Central and South America. A growth in global immigration and urbanization brought fourth innovative ideas that expanded on new notions for the social functions of schools. John Dewey explained how the new social functions of the schools would provide a means for bringing all people, their ideas, and cultures together in such a way that it would bring greater understanding and lessen friction.
As a result of this, the educational system introduced a number of movements including the kindergarten movement which was established to improve the quality of urban living and poverty where the children were conceived as a garden to be cultivated in the same manner as a plant and the teacher was to establish a sense of growth and unity (pg 204). This system of learning was to incorporate the moral values commonly found in nuclear families that were “supposedly” lost in urban slums. The major goal of this movement was to children habits that would reform the home and educating the parents, particularly the mother.
One of my main concerns with the kindergarten movement was that colonists assumed that these immigrants didn’t already have an established sense of family and unity. They assumed that the children would be raised in an inappropriate manner and would grow up to be immoral if it had not been for the movements. People from different countries have their own way of bringing up their children but does this imply that this is the wrong way? Must there be one universal way of social and moral upbringing? How does this affect the parent and the child?
Posted in Welfare Function
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Chapter 7
Although common schools were established to create a unified culture and communal scholastic experience, the presence of segregation and discrimination in American societies negatively affected many aspects in education by creating unfair environments for “non-white” immigrants including the Asian, Mexican, Native, African, and Puerto Rican Americans.
Chapter 7 discusses how these groups of people endured many hardships due to the adverse racial attitudes of the Anglo-Americans. One of the major issues was that, like other immigrants, Latin Americans had a difficult time attaining full citizenship in the United States. I had a hard time understanding the fight to restrain Mexican Americans, already living in the US, from their rights to citizenship if they were already technically living in the territory after the end of the Mexican-American War of 1848 where Mexico lost much of its land to the United States. Similarly, the same thing happened to Native Americans where the Anglo-Americans wanted to eradicate these groups of people by forms of cultural and ethnic cleansing. Later, these and other adversities came to affect the many children attending schools as the gap between educational discrimination and equal education opportunities increased.
Many immigrants hope to enter into the United States with open arms to escape the economical, educational, social, and/or religious deprivations in their countries. Unfortunately, as we have seen historically, this was and is not the case for many immigrants. Have attitudes towards migrants changed since the first “non-white” migrants entered into United States? Have there been any positive changes/negative changes? What can be done to make things better for immigrants(citizenship/language)? Has the citizenship process become more difficult to obtain?
Posted in Immigration and the Challenge of “School for All”
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Chapter 6
The development of professional teaching and the role of women in the workforce as educators were two significant topics in Chapter 6. During the early 1800’s the ideal responsibilities of women were simply domestic roles where they tended the children and maintained a clean household. Shortly after the American Revolution, the domestic roles of women were linked with their responsibilities for shaping the characters of their children as future republicans. This ideology opened doors for them as educational instructors teaching in areas beyond the basic reading and writing subjects. Although women got paid less than men they looked at this position as a stepping stone that would hopefully allow them to fulfill other roles in the workforce.
Teaching methods were also an important factor that was discussed. During the nineteenth century, there were elementary schools where the majority of teachers had students recite information, stressing memorization, which has been proven to be an ineffective method of learning (pg 147). Since then, although many schools have tried to instill different classroom practices that apply a “learning by doing” method, can we say that major differences have arisen? What are some of the methods that were used in the schools we attended and how do they differ from those of the nineteenth century?
Posted in Role and Perception of Teachers, Teacher-student relationship, Teachers and Pedagogy
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Chapter 5
During the 1840’s there was a tremendous social riot in the United States between the English colonists and the Irish immigrants. There was a “No Irish Need Apply” song composed to symbolize that the Irish were not welcome as residents or workers. This ideology started during the times when there was an English dominance in Ireland leaving the Irish with little ownership of their own lands. As the Irish arrived to New York and Boston, they were greeted with open resentment and were left to work in mines and were look at as being the scum of the scum by the other European Americans (pg 110). Differences in religion increased the hostility between the two which later also came to affect the educational systems and ideologies of what was being taught. Later, the origins of the Catholic school can be found in the centuries-old struggle between the Irish and Anglo-Saxon cultures. This cultural conflict threatened Protestant Anglo-American cultural domination.
The perception by many whites that Irish Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans were a threat to the dominance of white Protestant Anglo-American culture in the United States resulted in segregation which, consequently, affected the structure of common schools. Was there segregation between the Irish Americans, African Americans and Native Americans? If the social “minorities” of that time were really the majority, then why didn’t they try to come together to try to instill a different system in the United States where they could all have the same advantages as the Anglo-Americans? How have things changed in our current society from that of what was happening in the 1840’s or has it changed at all?
Posted in Common School and Power, Native American Education
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Chapter 4
Chapter four referred to an ideology in the very beginning that captured my attention. It was said that during the early 1800’s, the common school reformers believed that education could be used to reduce tensions between social classes and eliminate crime and poverty (pg 79). Although, theoretically, education is supposed to decrease the gap between social groups, essentially, this is not what normally happens in most societies. Though education is something that is easily attainable, sometimes people are subdued by difficult encumbrances that do not allow them to get the best education whether it be due to financial problems or social and geographical demographics. For example, a person studying at a public school versus another person that can afford to attend a private school is not going to get the same education, is probably not going to grow up to be around the same social groups and will have a harder time making any economical advancements in life. I’m not saying that this will be the case for every person but it is a common case that still occurs today. Therefore, education is one way in which social stratifications are formed. Once these tensions increase within a society, the likelihood of an increase in crime and poverty will follow.
In chapter three Curti criticized Jeffersonian thought for proposing a mainly literary education for the low and middle schools. He argued that this type of education would be of little benefit to “common folk struggling on the less fertile soils and to the frontiersmen with their peculiar problems.” He also criticized Jefferson for displaying more interest in the organization of university studies than the schools for the common folk (pg 75). These are still issues that educational facilities are facing today. While private sector schools improve, public schools are increasingly becoming worse. What can truly be done to decrease the tensions between social classes? What do these tensions say about our American education? Does this give the “common folk” any hope on a brighter future?
Posted in The Governments’ Role in Education
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Chapter 3
Thomas Jefferson’s ideas on education greatly contrast to those of his time. He emphasizes on the importance of not putting too much concentration on authoritarianism and believed that it should not impose political values or mold the virtuous republican citizen (pg 55). He believed that education should provide each person with the necessary tools so that the student will be able to make educated decisions on obtaining information and furthermore doing something with that information. I completely agree with this innovative way of introducing education to the masses. Students shouldn’t be molded to become a particular kind of citizen. With a proper education and common moral upbringings one should be able to decide for themselves the type of person they want to be.
As we go through our scholastic lives we might ask ourselves, how does our government establish what the proper basic curriculum is at, both, an elementary and collegial level? How do they establish what subjects are more important without leaving out things that may be important to some or most individuals?
Posted in Multiculturalism, Nationalism, and the Role(s) of Education
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