Public schools

[PeachBaby]

Just curious, does anyone know why public schools were started in the first place?

Thanks!

[staceychev]

Seems to me that they were originally started by individual communities that wanted to share resources and teach core values in addition to the basics of literacy and computation. I do like Gatto's theory that mass compulsory education came from titans of industry wanting to emulate the Prussian system. See this link for the article he wrote for Harper's a couple of years back.

[pigpokey]

I think my father always said it was to piss off the Catholic church.

[LauraLoo]

Hmmm......I'm finding some interesting things.
One simple explanation is that, in the US, leaders wanted to make sure that education was available to all and not just the wealthy.
I've read before that some of the underlying reasons were to assimilate core values among the masses and to prepare children for organized labor when they became of age.

I'm not sure if you'll get an answer that everyone agrees on, since written history is often biased.

I just googled history of education in the US, and got some interesting results. I wonder if it would be different if I had just googled history of world public education.

http://www.servintfree.net/~aidmn-ej...tedStates.html

http://www.historyliteracy.org/download/Sears2.pdf

[phathui5]

Here's an interview about it:

http://www.backstoryradio.org/2009/1...ys-transcript/

[Dar]

Moved from Learning at Home and Beyond to Learning at School.

[lach]

The first public schools were in New England, where an important part of the Puritan belief system was being able to read and interpret the Bible. So public schools were established to ensure a literate population. Of course, 'population' only meant white males... but research shows that the education received trickled around and the female literacy rate was about equal to the male literacy rate in Massachusetts Bay during the 17th century (and it was pretty high at that).

The United States was established on some pretty intellectual and rationalist principles, and the men who created the union believed that an educated population was essential in maintaining a democracy. That's been the tradition throughout US history, with the net being cast wider as voting rights were cast wider. The right to an education is one of the basic rights that has been enshrined in the US legal system. When the midwest was settled in the 19th century, provisions were made that every settlement had a public school open to the settler's children. I believe that in one of the schools that Laura teaches in in the Little House books, there are only two or three students: but the district had to have a school with a real teacher. The teacher was a 14 year old girl, which kind of shows you the level of education available to many people: but having a literate population with a passing knowledge of simple mathematics and history was considered a social policy priority.

Just some trivia, but we call them public schools because they're open to the public. Interestingly, in the UK public schools are what we call private prep schools. This is because back in the day, before there was free education widely available, your two options were a private tutor or to attend a school open to the public (meaning, any members of the public whose parents were willing to pay for it). What we in the US call public schools, they call state schools.

[ollyoxenfree]

Originally Posted by PeachBaby

Just curious, does anyone know why public schools were started in the first place?

Thanks!

Are you only interested in public schools, i.e. taxpayer-funded, government supported educational institutions, or in formal schooling?

Formal schooling has a much longer history, dating back thousands of years. You'll find many examples in western antiquity - Mesopotamia in 2,500 B.C., Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome...

[Amys1st]

Originally Posted by pigpokey

I think my father always said it was to piss off the Catholic church.

I like your dad. ROFLMAO.

[Leta]

What I learned in US history (my college minor- and it's been a few years, so forgive me if this isn't 100%) was that, after the Constitution was written, Jefferson started making noise about needing an educated population because a) at the time, the US gov't was considered very complicated, and b) citizens needed to be able to think critically in order to vote properly.

Then, Hamilton set up the first Bank of the United States- printing nationwide currency that was tied to the price of gold, rather than individual banks just issuing "notes" for the gold in vault. This was considered a very complex banking system, as well. So the idea was that if we had this complicated gov't and complicated banking system, and we expected people to fully participate in public life, we needed educated citizens.

From there, it took awhile to give the mandate, but eventually what happened was that during westward expansion, when we set up the national grid (Jefferson again), a schoolhouse had to built where the corners of four quarter sections touched. This was about one schoolhouse per four farms, depending on the size of the farms. The schools went to eighth grade, tops, often not even that far. High school usually cost $$$, and to go you had to board somewhere in town. Hence the stereotype of rural, uneducated rubes- if you lived in town, housing wasn't an issue, and secondary ed was a lot more doable. Unless your parents were very prosperous, if you lived on a farm, there was a good chance that high school was out of the question.

Then, when westward expansion pushed further with the building of the transcontinental railroad (a joint public/private venture), a certain # of lots along the RR tracks were sold to fund a schoolhouse "per settlement requirements". This is where much of the legacy of local control comes from.

Shortly before the Civil War, much of the American SE still had not built or pursued any kind of public education, despite Federal mandates. The Fed was breathing down the necks of the southern states to spend $$$ on public education, and this was one of many minor issues the South had per states rights.

That's all I can remember right now. HTH

[Aeress]

And our current public school system are different than what was created back in the 1800's.

Industrialization changed the way in which we educate- sequences and core curriculums were established, the way the schools were designed and how they developed policies and procedures.

Maria Montessori wrote about this, and how it influenced her teachings.

Oh shoot, the kids interrupted me, totally forgot what I was going to say- grrr.

[annethcz]

I think it's important to note that when the federal government started pushing for public schools, it wasn't a top-down movement. Many communities already provided public schools, so it wasn't as if suddenly the federal government swooped in and forced local communities to open schools that the people objected to.

Originally Posted by Leta

The schools went to eighth grade, tops, often not even that far. High school usually cost $$$, and to go you had to board somewhere in town. Hence the stereotype of rural, uneducated rubes- if you lived in town, housing wasn't an issue, and secondary ed was a lot more doable. Unless your parents were very prosperous, if you lived on a farm, there was a good chance that high school was out of the question.

This was still true until the 1940s or so. Not only were hands needed on the farm, but transportation was a HUGE issue. Both of my grandmothers lived rurally. One of them walked 3 miles into town to go to high school every day. My other grandmother stayed with a family friend who lived in town and worked as maid to pay for her room/board in order to attend high school. This was the only option for her if she wanted to complete her secondary education- there was no such thing as school buses back then.