CSwriter1
29th April 2005, 09:55 PM
When a commentator announced teachers should not have to waste their time on poor students, I was alarmed. This comment came just shortly before we announced a national youth crisis. But well, after the 1958 National Defense Education Act had replaced liberal education with the German model for education.
When the commentator defended his comment as one of the most popular things he ever said, I began researching the history of education, because I knew when my grandmother was a teacher, education was about citizenship, and how we kept social order, reduced crime and welfare. As I understand education for democracy, it is the education of the children down the street, who may not have good parents, that we need to concern ourselves with.
My research goes all the way back to Sumer, so I do have a few things to say about education. But most important is what was said at the 1917 National Education Association Conference.
First, we did not leave it up to parents to teach their children good citizenship, but the other way around.
Sara H. Fahey explains how industry tried to close the schools when we entered the first world war, and how teachers fought to keep the schools open. To make this short, schools were kept open because an institution for making good citizens is good for making patriotic citizens. It is unlikely we could have been so successful in both world wars without our national educational system's contribution in mobilizing us for war, and keeping spirits high, while producing new recruits during the war years.
Before the war, the US was flooded with immigrants, and our once liberal democracy didn't want to become an authority over people, as we stood against this. That means we had to use culture for social order, and it was up to public schools to transmit that culture to students, and we knew, by Americanizing the children, the parents would also become Americanized. I hope there is interest in this, because I have a few old books to share.
At this same conference J. A. B. Sinclair, Surgeon, United States Navy, Portland Recruiting Station, Portland, Oregon, suggested we use the German model for education. That is another subject.
When the commentator defended his comment as one of the most popular things he ever said, I began researching the history of education, because I knew when my grandmother was a teacher, education was about citizenship, and how we kept social order, reduced crime and welfare. As I understand education for democracy, it is the education of the children down the street, who may not have good parents, that we need to concern ourselves with.
My research goes all the way back to Sumer, so I do have a few things to say about education. But most important is what was said at the 1917 National Education Association Conference.
First, we did not leave it up to parents to teach their children good citizenship, but the other way around.
Sara H. Fahey explains how industry tried to close the schools when we entered the first world war, and how teachers fought to keep the schools open. To make this short, schools were kept open because an institution for making good citizens is good for making patriotic citizens. It is unlikely we could have been so successful in both world wars without our national educational system's contribution in mobilizing us for war, and keeping spirits high, while producing new recruits during the war years.
Before the war, the US was flooded with immigrants, and our once liberal democracy didn't want to become an authority over people, as we stood against this. That means we had to use culture for social order, and it was up to public schools to transmit that culture to students, and we knew, by Americanizing the children, the parents would also become Americanized. I hope there is interest in this, because I have a few old books to share.
At this same conference J. A. B. Sinclair, Surgeon, United States Navy, Portland Recruiting Station, Portland, Oregon, suggested we use the German model for education. That is another subject.