Many children in early Victorian England never went to school at all and more than half of them grew up unable even to read or write. Although some did go to Sunday schools which were run by churches. Children from rich families were luckier than poor children. Nannies looked after them, and they had toys and books. A governess would teach the children at home. Then, when the boys were old enough, they were sent away to a public school such as Eton or Rugby. The daughters were kept at home and taught singing, piano playing and sewing. Slowly, things changed for poorer children too. By the end of the Victorian age all children under 12 had to go to school. Now everybody could learn how to read and write, and how to count properly.
Schools
There were several kinds of school for poorer children. The youngest might go to a "Dame" school,run by a local woman in a room of her house. The older ones went to a day school. Other schools were organised by churches and charities. Among these were the "ragged" schools which were for orphans and very poor children.
School room The school could be quite a grim building. The rooms were warmed by a single stove or open fire. The walls of a Victorian schoolroom were quite bare, except perhaps for an embroidered text. Curtains were used to divide the schoolhouse into classrooms. The shouts of several classes competed as they were taught side by side. There was little fresh air because the windows were built high in the walls, to stop pupils looking outside and being distracted from their work. Many schools were built in the Victorian era, between 1837 and 1901. In the country you would see barns being converted into schoolrooms. Increasing numbers of children began to attend, and they became more and more crowded. But because school managers didn’t like to spend money on repairs, buildings were allowed to rot and broken equipment was not replaced.
Teachers
Children were often scared of their teachers because they were very strict. Children as young as thirteen helped the teacher to control the class. These “pupil teachers” scribbled notes for their lessons in books .They received certificates which helped them qualify as teachers when they were older. In schools before 1850 you might see a single teacher instructing a class of over 100 children with help of pupils called “monitors”. The head teacher quickly taught these monitors, some of them as young as nine, who then tried to teach their schoolmates. Salaries were low, and there were more women teaching than men. The pale, lined faces of older teachers told a story. Some taught only because they were too ill to do other jobs. The poor conditions in schools simply made their health even worse. Sometimes, teachers were attacked by angry parents. They shouted that their children should be at work earning money, not wasting time at school. Teachers in rough areas had to learn to box!
Pupils
After 1870, all children from five to thirteen had to attend school by law. In winter in the countryside, many children faced a teeth chattering walk to school of several miles. A large number didn’t turn up. Lessons lasted from 9am to 5pm, with a two hour lunch break. Because classes were so large, pupils all had to do the same thing at the same time. The teacher barked a command, and the children all opened their books. At the second command they began copying sentences from the blackboard. When pupils found their work boring, teachers found their pupils difficult to control.
Lessons
Victorian lessons concentrated on the “three Rs”-Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. Children learnt by reciting things like parrots, until they were word perfect. It was not an exciting form of learning! Science was taught by “object lesson”. Snails, models of trees, sunflowers , stuffed dogs, crystals, wheat or pictures of elephants and camels were placed on each pupil’s desk as the subject for the lesson. The object lesson was supposed to make children observe, then talk about what they had seen. Unfortunately, many teachers found it easier to chalk up lists describing the object, for the class to copy. Geography meant yet more copying and reciting - listing the countries on a globe, or chanting the names of railway stations between London and Holyhead. If you look at a timetable from late in the 1800s and you will see a greater number of subjects, including needlework, cookery and woodwork. But the teacher still taught them by chalking and talking.
Slates and copybooks
Children learned to write on slates, they scratched letters on them with sharpened pieces of slate. Paper was expensive, but slates could be used again and again. Children were supposed to bring sponges to clean them. Most just spat on the slates, and rubbed them clean with their sleeves. Older children learned to use pen and ink by writing in “copybooks”. Each morning the ink monitor filled up little, clay ink wells and handed them round from a tray. Pens were fitted with scratchy, leaking nibs, and children were punished for spilling ink which “blotted their copybooks”. Teaches also gave dictation, reading out strange poems which the children had to spell out correctly.
Reader
Slates showing pictures and names of different objects hang from the walls of the infants class. The children chant the name of each object in turn. When they can use these words in sentences they will move on to a “reader”. This would p probably be the Bible. For reading lessons, the pupils lined up with their toes touching a semi-circle chalked on the floor. They took it in turns to read aloud from the bible. The words didn’t sound like everyday words, children stumbled over the long sentences. Quicker readers fidgeted as they waited for their turn to read. School inspectors slowly realised that the bibles language was too difficult. Bibles were gradually replaced by books of moral stories, with titles like Harriet and the Matches. A reader had to last for a whole year. If the class read it too quickly, they had to go back to the beginning and read it all over again!
Abacus
The pupils used an abacus to help them with their maths. Calculations were made using imperial weights and measures instead of our simpler metric system. Children had to pass inspections in maths, reading and writing before they could move up to the next class or “standard”. Teachers were also tested by the dreaded inspector, to make sure that they deserved government funds.
Cane
Teachers handed out regular canings. Look inside the “punishment book” that every school kept, and you will see many reasons for these beatings: rude conduct, leaving the playground without permission, sulkiness, answering back, missing Sunday prayers, throwing ink pellets and being late. Boys were caned across their bottoms, and girls across their hands or bare legs. Some teachers broke canes with their fury, and kept birch rods in jars of water to make them more supple. Victims had to chose which cane they wished to be beaten with!
Dunce's Cap
Punishment did not end with caning. Students had to stand on a stool at the back of the class, wearing an arm band with DUNCE written on it. The teacher then took a tall, cone-shaped hat decorated with a large “D”, and placed it on the boys head. Today we know that some children learn more slowly than others. Victorian teachers believed that all children could learn at the same speed, and if some fell behind then they should be punished for not trying hard enough.
Drill
When its time for PE or “drill”, a pupil teacher starts playing an out-of-tune piano . The children jog, stretch and lift weights in time to the awful music. It is like a Victorian aerobics class! Even when the teacher rings a heavy , brass bell to announce the end of school, the pupils march out to the playground in perfect time
Playtime
Outside the classroom is a small yard crowded with shrieking schoolmates. Games of blind mans buff, snakes and ladders, hide-and-seek and hopscotch are in full swing. Some boys would beg a pigs bladder from the butcher, which they would blow up to use as a football. Others drilled hob nails through cotton reels to make spinning tops.
The Social Structure of Today's world compare to Flatland's Social Structure.
"I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space."
With this statement, Edwin A Abbott takes the reader on journey of the Flatlands with the guide of A Square. Flatlands is a two dimensional world with characters of different two dimensional geometry. Through the geometry of each character, the society has made a class system depending of the number of sides of each figure, person. The more side one has, the higher is one ranked in the society. The ones, who have enough sides to be considered as a circle, are the taking to be the most intelligent beings in the society. Thus all the laws of society are passed by them. This is one of many characteristics of the social structure of the world of Flatland.
The book Flatlands, written by Edwin A. Abbott, is a satire of the Victorian era. The book reflects the social structure of the Victorian Era. The circles of Flatland represent the aristocracy and the clergy. The other polygons represent the middle class of that era. The fact that the lesser polygons can grow another side through each generation represents the ability for the middle class to move up in the society ladder to the aristocracy status. The women in flatlands represent the idea of women during the Victorian era. There are many other analogs toward the Victorian era in the book. Since there had been many changes in the society since the Victorian era, it might seem reasonable to say that it is "good model" of only the Victorian era. Although these changes have not really change the structure of society, but only change the requirements of each class. Thus, the social structure of today's world still mirror closely to the social structure of Flatland, and the way the masses are controlled by the selected few.
The social structure of Flatland model is based on class system with women and the isosceles being the lowest and the "circles" being the highest. In Victorian era, the isosceles triangles represent the slaves and serfs. Nowadays, there exist only a few countries that still have slaves or serfs because we now find it to be morally wrong. Instead the slaves and serfs are replaced by low wage immigrant and sweatshop workers whose lives are bad as a serf, if not worse. They live in broken down house with rats and insects. They work from sunrise to sunset just make enough money to support their families. They work incredibly hard to get enough money to support their families, maybe even harder than slaves or serfs because the possibility of pulling their families out of poverty if they work hard enough. They are treated by society in the same way as the isosceles triangles in Flatland. They are looked down with no respect and thought of being not educated.
The circles of the Victorian society were the aristocracy and the upper clergy (bishops, archbishops). In today's world, the aristocracy is replaced by big corporation business people. The clergy is still there, but they have less influence as they once did. This is due to the decrease in the philosophy of living to get into heaven and increase in living for the moment. The big corporation business people control the lives of the mass, probably in more ways than the aristocracy did in Victorian era.
The two major ways they use to control the masses are main stream media and government. By using the main stream media, they tell the masses how to dress and what to eat and what to do for fun and much more. Main stream media manipulates the way the masses dress eat have fun by advertisements. There are many different types of advertisement, like funny commercials, sexy looking people on ad in the magazine and paper, stars, and even televisions show and movies. It is true that advertisement is a way to give people information of your products, but the way television shows and movies change the script just to fit some products into the shows and movies seem more like mind manipulation. This is because when a person is at the supermarket deciding what to have for dinner and see peanut butter and thinks of the movie Meet Joe Black1, assuming the person saw and like the movie, then the chance of the person buying the peanut butter is high. This is because the peanut butter reminds the person of the movie. If the script was written with peanut butter as a part of the plot in the beginning without any corporation influence, then it is not mind manipulation. However, when the plot is change just to have the corporation's product into the movies, it is mind manipulation. Another example of an advertisement manipulating the masses is the smoking billboards near public school, which became a very controversial case against the tobacco industry. The courts ruled that the big billboards of cool looking people in front of the public school did have an influence on the children that attend to that school. The tobacco companies did this with the knowledge that cigarettes are bad for one's health and additive. Yet they still tried to use this tactics to manipulate the mind of the young people to start smoking.
In the government, they lobby for laws that will help their own companies despite the effects it would have on the environment and community as a whole. One example of this is the greenhouse effects caused by the pollutions of cars, trucks and factories. There is more than enough scientific evidence that greenhouse effect are caused by the gas like carbon monoxide and other pollutants from burning fossil fuels, but the US government still hasn't officially declare that greenhouse effects are a threat to our environment. They say they need more research information. While they are researching the information, companies are producing the SUV's which produces more pollutants than previous cars in the past. Another way the circles of nowadays society use the government is by supplying campaign funds to the politicians. They help the politicians get elected in office by supplying the necessary funds to reach out to public and the politicians, in return, do favors for the "circles" in government. An example is President George Bush's tax cut proposal. The tax cut proposal only affects the rich people in the society. It has been highly criticized by great economists as a bad idea because it will pull the economy down in a greater slump. This will also cut the government budget, which means less money of the government supported programs like public education, police force, and other programs. Shelter and mental hospitals supported by the government will have to close down, which unleash new dangers to the community. Even with negative aspects, it still has a good change of passing Congress.
One of the arguments about how the model is different from today's society is the fact that it seems to be easier for a person in today's world to move around into different social classes than it is in Flatland. In Flatland, each generation can only increase by one side while a person in today's world can go from a home of a poor family into the vice president of a major company. This argument is not as valid as it might seem. There are many obstacles in the way of the poor to succeed that does not appear for the wealthy. Those children of poor families, who do succeed, are limited by such a small percent that it is almost none existing.
One of the major obstacles is education. As in Flatland, the education for the regular polygons is very different from the education of the isosceles. In Flatland, the regular polygons are taught feeling and sight recognition while the isosceles are taught only feeling. Similarly, the education of the rich and poor is very different. The main difference between the public schools of a poor community and rich community is the funding to the schools. Since the education of specific district is funding by the taxes of that district and the children have to go to their district schools. Thus the children of the inner cities are stuck with low-funded school while the children in the suburbs have decently funded school. With low amount funds, the teacher are paid less, the textbooks are outdate and broken into parts, the building breaking apart, and the entire atmosphere of the school is not really fitting for learning. Also since the teachers are getting paid less in the inner city school than the suburbs, the good teachers tends to go the suburbs. In a high school, named Stuyvesant, many of the great teachers moved to the suburb school because it paid more and they needed to support their families. One of the teachers even gets pay more if he retires than teaching. This became a controversial case in front of the Supreme Court brought by a father of an inner city child about the Board of Education is violating his child right to pursue happiness by sending the child into the badly funded inner city school. At the first trial, the courts ruled that the education is different but equal, and then on the repeal the courts ruled that the education is not equal. This is only the differences between public schools of different districts; the private schools are in a whole other league. In private schools, they start teaching the children logic and develop the minds of the children with fun games as earlier as preschool. One example of these preschool is the 92nd St. Y. The demand to get into that preschool is so high that it started a controversy. The controversy is as follow:
"Jack B. Grubman, the former telecommunications analyst at Citigroup, implied in an e-mail message that he had begun recommending shares of AT&T to gain the help of Sanford I. Weill, Citigroup's chairman, in securing spots for children at the school. In the summer of 2000, Citigroup pledged $1 million to the Y. "
All in all, the change that has occur throughout history since the Victorian era has not really change the social structure of the society, but only change the types of people in each class. The slaves and serfs are replaced by the low wage workers. The aristocracy has been replaced by the corporative leaders. Although the upper class does not directly show their control of the masses, they still control most of the lives of the masses as in the Victorian era and Flatland. Some of the ways they use to control the masses are main stream and government. They influence the media and the politicians with their wealth. It might seem that there is more flexibility in moving around the social classes, but there is really not. This is because of the obstacles that are only in front of the poor, not the wealthy. The main obstacle is the difference between the educations received the two groups. The education of wealthy is far more superior to that of the poor. If education is the key to success, then the wealthy is given all- access key while the poor is given a limited one. It is true that there are a few poor people who moved from the poor community into the wealthy community, but it requires extreme amount of work from the entire household and a lot of sacrifices. Even through the hard work and sacrifices, they are not guaranteed anything. Thus, the percent of people do move around in the social classes is so small that is almost non-exist.
Teaching – past and present
Much has changed since the days of the Victorian schoolroom, but many things are still familiar in our state schools
Poplar Prints
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Schooling for all began 135 years ago with the Education Act of 1870. For the first time children had to go to school. Local 'school boards' could insist on the attendance of every child up to the age of 13.
Since then, education has gone through huge changes. Children no longer sit crammed on benches, 50 or 60 to a classroom. There is no longer any physical punishment for misdemeanours. We understand more about teaching and learning.
Even so, our Victorian forbears might recognise a few similarities in today's classrooms.
From 1870, children started school at the age of five – earlier than everywhere else in Europe.
Today's children still start compulsory all-day schooling at five, and we are still the 'earliest starters' in Europe. In other countries, statutory school doesn't begin until six or seven.
Victorian children often used slates – small boards which they wrote on with chalk.
Today, a growing number of primary schools give their pupils a small whiteboard – the hi-tech equivalent to slate. It's especially useful in maths. The teacher sets a problem, then the children write down their answer and hold up their board. The teacher can see quickly who has the correct answer.
Right from the start, 'board schools' (what we'd term 'state schools') had to keep records of attendance, examinations, punishments and truancy. Board inspectors and Her Majesty's Inspectors (HMIs) would oversee school records and make inspections of teaching.
Inspection has never ceased, but it has undergone reorganisation. Since 1992, Ofsted (the Office of Standards in Education) has inspected all English schools, and other agencies do the same in the rest of the UK.
Until the end of the 19th century, teachers' salaries were adjusted according to how many of their pupils succeeded in achieving basic standards.
'Performance-related pay' for teachers in the 21st century is controversial. But extra payments for 'advanced skills teachers', in place since 1998, have proved popular, and the government wants to make more awards for 'excellent teachers' who have proved themselves in the classroom.
Brightly coloured classrooms and Standard Assessment Tasks are now regular features of modern education
Sally & Richard Greenhill
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In Victorian times, children in elementary schools (what we'd term 'primary schools') were tested annually in the 'three Rs' – reading, writing and arithmetic.
Modern children face national tests called Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) at Key Stage 1 (age 7), Key Stage 2 (age 11) and Key Stage 3 (age 14) in Maths, English and Science.
Younger children were thought to have less need for formal education. Schools in the late 19th century often had infants departments with a greater emphasis on play, creativity and experience in small groups. This contrasted with the more rigid, formal learning usual for older children at the time.
We'd call this 'child-centred education' today. Early years education – beginning at around the age of three and continuing until seven or eight – is a separate specialism for teachers. Many educationists feel strongly that younger children's different educational and psychological needs are worth defending – and they believe that this approach should persist beyond infant school age too.
Looking for an interactive experience? Explore the history of teachers and education using our multimedia timeline! (It uses the shockwave (v. 4 and above) and real player plug-ins.)
1772 to Late 18th Century
"Wanted Immediately: A Sober diligent Schoolmaster capable of teaching READING, WRITING, ARITHMETICK, and the Latin TONGUE... Any Person qualified as above, and well recommended, will be put into immediate Possession of the School, on applying to the Minister of Charles Parish, York County." -- The Virginia Gazette, August 20, 1772
From colonial times and into the early decades of the 19th century, most teachers were men. There were, of course, career schoolmasters, but, especially in smaller and rural schools, the people who stood in front of the classroom might well be farmers, surveyors, even innkeepers, who kept school for a few months a year in their off-season. The more educated and ambitious schoolmasters were young men who made the schoolroom a stepping-stone on their way to careers in the church or the law. The connections they made with local ministers and school committees in securing teaching jobs often helped them when they moved on to their real professions.
1820s to 1830s: The Common School Era
"The grammar school teachers have rarely had any education beyond what they have acquired in the very schools where they have to teach. Their attainments, therefore, to say the least, are usually very moderate." -- James Carter, Education Reformer, 1826
Reformers like Horace Mann had agitated to make schooling more democratic, universal and non-sectarian. But as new public schools, called Common Schools, sprang up everywhere, there simply were not enough schoolmasters to staff them. Mann and his fellow reformers like James Carter, Henry Barnard and Catharine Beecher saw that the schools needed not only more teachers, but better teachers. Many of the most promising young men continued to be siphoned off by more prestigious professions, as well as by new industries and the lure of the western frontier. So where would the army of new teachers come from? There was, of course, another ready source of labor, if reformers could convince the public to accept it. Women were poised to take over the schoolroom.
Common School
The Common School is the precursor to today's public school. In the late 1830s, the reformer Horace Mann of Massachusetts proposed a system of free, universal and non-sectarian schooling. Each district would provide a school for all children, regardless of religion or social class (hence the term Common School). Previously, church groups or private schools had provided most education for children, for which students generally had to pay tuition. The new schools would be funded by taxes and special fees paid by parents.
In addition to teaching basic literacy and arithmetic skills, the new schools would, according to reformers, instill a common political and social philosophy of sound republican principals. Mann and others hoped such democratic consensus would ward off much-feared political instability and upheaval. Children would gain needed knowledge while learning how to be productive democratic citizens. The advent of the Common School significantly affected teachers and the teaching profession. The increasing number of new schools across the country demanded greater numbers of educated teachers. In order to staff the schools, communities turned to women, spurring the feminization of the teaching profession -- the entry and eventual domination of women in the workforce. It also led to the formalization of teacher training, often through Normal Schools.
1840s: Feminization Begins
"God seems to have made woman peculiarly suited to guide and develop the infant mind, and it seems...very poor policy to pay a man 20 or 22 dollars a month, for teaching children the ABCs, when a female could do the work more successfully at one third of the price." -- Littleton School Committee, Littleton, Massachusetts, 1849
Women had long run what were called Dame Schools in their homes for the youngest children. While the dame-school teachers were not particularly well educated, they did demonstrate that women could teach. In any case, younger women were becoming better educated; the United States, in fact, had a very high degree of female literacy. The Common School reformers seized on the idea of hiring women to teach in the new schools. They cited as women's most important qualification their femininity -- the fact that they were women. But they often added, in an aside, that women need be paid only a third what men received.
The reformers argued that women were by nature nurturing and maternal, as well as of high moral character. As Mann wrote in 1840, "The school committee are sentinels stationed at the door of every school house in the State, to see that no teacher crosses its threshold, who is not clothed, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, in garments of virtue." (Note that Mann still refers to the teacher as he, though he usually proselytized on behalf of women as moral leaders in the schoolroom.) Teachers were moral exemplars, the models and instructors of upright living.
Even as they granted women moral superiority, reformers quietly worried over women's ability to maintain order in the classroom and discipline unruly children. In many schools, the new schoolmarms were young - some only fourteen or fifteen years old. They had finished the equivalent of eighth grade and, in some schools, that qualified them to teach. Their pupils might well be taller and older than they - at least when the farm boys put in their periodic appearances in the classroom. Nineteenth-century female teachers often complained that teaching was most challenging when the "big boys," who would either flirt or tease and defy them, arrived.
The reformers often derided women's intellectual capabilities. Yet women were becoming better educated than ever before, and state officials took notice. In this period, most states began to put in place requirements for teachers: basic academic competence and attendance at summer institutes for ongoing training. Many (beginning with Massachusetts in 1838) had inaugurated Normal Schools, institutions devoted to teacher education.
Normal Schools
Normal Schools were originally established to provide systematic training of teachers. Their goal was to prepare teachers for work in the emerging Common Schools at a level beyond the simple grammar-school education many teachers previously brought to the classroom. Normal Schools prided themselves on their thorough, cohesive and "scientific" curriculum. They would provide a norm for all teachers (hence the term Normal School) that would assure a level of quality generally unavailable previously.
The first state-sponsored Normal School was established in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1839, under the guidance of Cyrus Peirce (and at the urging of Horace Mann). While the idea of Normal Schools achieved great popularity for a period and many states moved to set up their own schools, in fact, the heyday of Normal Schools was relatively short-lived. Around the turn of the twentieth century, as reformers sought to professionalize teaching to a greater degree, education courses increasingly moved into regular colleges and universities. But the impact of Normal Schools on the concept of teacher training was enormous, as states recognized the need to provide teachers with stimulating and demanding preparation courses.
1850s to 1880s: Women's Experience in the Classroom
With as many as 60 children in the one-room rural schoolhouse, teachers had their work cut out for them. Admittedly, the curriculum was generally not very demanding -- reading, writing, basic arithmetic, a little geography and history. The texts often took the form of simple moral tracts and primers of childish virtues. Webster's blue-backed speller was popular, as was the Bible, and later McGuffey's famous readers.
Still, women flocked to teaching. Not only were they grateful for the salary, however meager; they also welcomed the independence and sense of purpose teaching gave them. No doubt some regretted having to leave their homes and earn their own livings. Many assumed they would teach only a few years until they married. But many others welcomed the escape from a life of drab labor, isolation or frivolity. Teaching gave women a window onto a wider world of ideas, politics and public usefulness.
Ironically, the women teachers could effect change precisely because they had no longstanding, vested interest in teaching careers. They were, in a sense, outsiders. But they formed associations, went to summer training institutes, exchanged ideas and friendships, and unobtrusively contributed to the transformation of their communities. The feminization of teaching changed not only how society perceived women, but how women perceived themselves.
Port Royal Experiment
Begun in 1862 on the South Carolina Sea Islands, the Port Royal Experiment was an early attempt to prepare newly freed slaves for full democratic participation in post-Civil War society. When Union forces began an assault on St. Helena Island on the Port Royal Sound, the plantation owners fled, leaving behind their homes, possessions, and 10,000 slaves. Philanthropic Northerners, including Laura Towne and Charlotte Forten, undertook to educate the soon-to-be freedmen. Their goals were literacy, economic independence and civil rights. Their efforts to bring the freedmen into "white society" became known as the Port Royal Experiment.
Hampton Institute
Founded in 1868 during southern Reconstruction, Hampton Institute in Virginia began as an agricultural college and Normal School for newly freed slaves. It was the vision of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who had commanded an African-American brigade during the Civil War. Armstrong, who led Hampton until 1893, perceived a need for vocational training for black Americans and convinced the American Missionary Association to establish Hampton. Its emphasis on practical manual skills (rather than strict academic pursuits) was seen at the time as enlightened and important for African-Americans in a period of crucial transition. In 1878, Hampton added an Indian Department, headed by another Civil War veteran, Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Teacher Elaine Goodale Eastman joined the Indian Department that year, launching her lifelong engagement with Native Americans. In 1900, Hampton took over the Penn School, the school founded by Laura Towne on the South Carolina Sea Islands.
Americanization
Since the Common School era (1830-1880), bringing diverse people into the American mainstream has been one of the primary goals of public education. Around the turn of the 20th century, immigrants flooded into the United States. In 1907 alone, authorities recorded the arrival of more than 1,200,000 newcomers. The movement to assimilate and Americanize these foreigners took on new urgency. Especially in cities, schools were not only expected to teach English, but to instill American customs, manners mores. At times the methods were extreme; principal Julia Richman, for instance, recommended washing students' mouths out with soap, kosher soap if necessary, when they spoke their native languages. Still, many immigrant families were grateful for the job the schools did; they saw the school as a bridge to a new and better life. And it often was. Students looked to teachers as role models, exemplars of gentility and success in the new land.
Wounded Knee, South Dakota
In 1890, American troops were convinced that a small band of Sioux Indians in South Dakota were planning an uprising. The Native Americans were practicing the Ghost Dance ritual, which foretold the return of the buffalo and the fall of the white man. While many observers, including the teacher Elaine Goodale Eastman, were convinced that the Sioux had no intention to wage war, the U.S. military thought otherwise. The tension came to a head near Wounded Knee Creek, close to the Pine Ridge Reservation, in the dead of winter. Government troops opened fire on unarmed men, women and children, killing nearly two hundred of them and injuring countless others. This action was among the last skirmishes of the American Indian Wars, but its legacy has lived on in uneasy relations ever since.
1890s to 1910s: Women Teacher's Rebellion
"It was with that first class that I became aware that a teacher was subservient to a higher authority. I became increasingly aware of this subservience to an ever growing number of authorities with each succeeding year, until there is danger today of becoming aware of little else." -- Marian Dogherty, Teacher, Boston, 1899
By the turn of the 20th century, nearly 75 percent of America's teachers were women. But women made up a far smaller percentage of administrators, and their power decreased with each higher level of authority. Their deportment had always been closely watched; increasingly their work in the schoolroom was not only scrutinized, but rigidly controlled. Teacher autonomy was on the decline, and teachers resented it.
Especially in big city schools, teachers at the turn of the 20th century felt like the most insignificant cogs in a huge machine. They felt dictated to and spied upon. Furthermore, they were badly paid and lacked pension benefits or job security. Many teaching positions were dispensed through political patronage. Married women were often barred from the classroom, and women with children were denied a place in schools. And daily conditions could be deplorable. The often-cited developments of immigration, urbanization and westward expansion had swelled, and changed the face of, the student population. Teachers had little flexibility in how they were to teach their myriad charges, who in urban schools particularly, might well come from impoverished families who spoke little English. They taught in classrooms that were overcrowded, dark and poorly ventilated. Schools felt like factories.
For rural teachers, conditions were not necessarily much better. They had limited resources, with the added burden of keeping up run-down schools. African-American teachers especially suffered from inadequate materials and funding. Though their communities were eager for schooling, teachers found that money was rarely abundant. Well into the 20th century, black school systems relied on hand-me-down textbooks and used equipment, discarded by their white counterparts. African-American teachers were usually paid significantly less than their white peers and their civil rights were often compromised. (For instance, in a later era, belonging to the NAACP could be grounds for dismissal and southern affiliates of the National Education Association denied black teachers membership.)
In the early decades of the 20th century, even as school districts put greater emphasis on "professionalization," teachers everywhere felt left behind. City Boards of Education, increasingly made up of business and professional men, worked to reform teaching. Often their goals were laudable: to root out corruption, to raise the practice and status of teaching, to ensure real student achievement. But they rarely had any first-hand knowledge of what teaching actually was like. They worked according to a business model, with clear hierarchies and chains of command -- which left teachers at the bottom. The "administrative progressives" (as education historian David Tyack has called them) wanted to impose uniformity and efficiency on classrooms of 50 disparate children. They supported the move away from Normal Schools to university departments of education, where theory would rule. They discouraged individual initiative by teachers, whom they considered too limited to enact worthwhile change.
Not surprisingly, teachers rebelled. At least in urban districts teachers had the advantage of numbers. Cities became the centers for the teachers associations that eventually grew into unions. In Chicago, Margaret Haley and Catherine Goggin of the Chicago Federation of Teachers rallied their peers (and the city government) for improved pay, retirement benefits and tenure. Haley knew that many women considered teaching genteel, white-collar work. Joining a union was anathema to them. But she convinced them that they needed the union and could do real social good within its embrace. In the process, she laid the foundation for the American Federation of Teachers (one of the two main teachers unions today, along with the National Education Association). In New York, Grace Strachan and the Interborough Association of Women Teachers fought for Equal Pay for Equal Work (despite men's assertion that they rightfully should be paid more than their female counterparts, since they had families to support).
Unions
There are two national teachers unions in the United States today, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. The NEA was founded in 1857 as a policy-making organization, one that hoped to influence the national debate about schools and schooling. Over the next hundred years, it played a significant role in standardizing teacher training and curriculum. Until the 1960s, the NEA tended to represent the interests of school administrators and educators from colleges and universities.
The AFT, on the other hand, was always much more of a grass-roots teachers' organization. It was formed in 1897 as the Chicago Teachers Federation, with the explicit aim of improving teachers' salaries and pensions. Catherine Goggin and Margaret Haley allied the CFT with the labor movement, going so far as to join the American Federation of Labor - an act that horrified everyone who wanted to see teaching as genteel, white-collar employment. At the same time, the union conceived its work in terms of broader social improvement, bettering the lives of the poor and the alienated. By 1916, several local unions had come together to form the AFT. In the 1940s, the AFT began collective bargaining with local school boards, which again horrified some people. Collective bargaining always carries the threat of strikes, and teachers, as servants of the community, were long seen as both too indispensable and too noble to engage in work stoppages. The issue of strikes remains contentious today.
Teacher militancy has waxed and waned over the past 50 years. But many teachers believe that whatever gains they have made -- in pay, benefits, job security and working conditions -- have come from the efforts of their unions. Today, the NEA and AFT flirt with the idea of merging and have made significant strides towards combining their memberships. Their common interests -- greater professionalization, increased authority for educators, enhanced clout in Washington, better working conditions and improved schools -- dictate working together, and perhaps even becoming one very powerful union.
1910s to 1930s: Progressivism
"How can the child learn to be a free and responsible citizen when the teacher is bound?" -- John Dewey, Philosopher of Education, 1918
Though it took time, the women teachers were largely successful. They gained better (and eventually equal) pay, pensions and tenure. They became principals of grammar schools and, in some smaller districts, even superintendents. But men continued to dominate administration, and the increased clout of women teachers made many people uneasy. Male educators fretted about The Woman Peril, making dire prophecies about the emasculating effects of women teachers. Through the 1920s, the bureaucrats' grip on schools, and on classroom practice, remained firm.
John Dewey, perhaps the most influential educational philosopher the 20th century, challenged the rigidity that characterized many American classrooms. By the 1920s he had become the standard-bearer for Progressive Education, arguing that democracy must prevail in the classroom. Both teachers and children needed to be free, he argued, to devise the best forms of learning for each child. These assumptions turned the hierarchy of classrooms and schools upside down. While the implementation of progressive education has been uneven over the past 100 years, its influence on teachers' roles within schools has been notable.
1930s to 1960s: Relative Calm
After about 1930, teachers went about their work with less public agitation. Unions declined after achieving most of the bread-and-butter goals they had first set. Larger political and economic issues diverted most teachers' attention. But among African-American educators, significant obstacles remained. In the 1940s, Viola Duval Stewart challenged the unequal pay scales of black and white teachers in Charleston, North Carolina. With the help of the young Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, she won her suit. Still, most southern schools remained legally segregated, and black schools invariably received less funding and fewer supplies. By the 1960s, desegregation was gaining steam and teachers clearly were at the forefront of a major social issue.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas 1954
In 1895, the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle that public facilities -- including schools -- could be "separate but equal," therefore legalizing segregation as long as facilities were equivalent for both races. The 1954 Brown suit, brought by parents in Topeka, Kansas, argued that segregated schools were inherently unequal. The Supreme Court agreed by unanimous decision. In 1955, the Court followed up by announcing that schools must desegregate "with all deliberate speed," although in many places it took ten to fifteen years for schools to become integrated. The later Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg decision took Brown one step further, recognizing bussing as a legitimate means to end segregation in the schools.
1960s to 1980s: Teachers, Social Equality and Professionalism
"We need to move now to a professional approach, which holds people accountable for doing what's good for kids, for teaching and learning. That requires change both on the part of the unions and on the part of school boards, administrators and parents and community participants in the process as well." -- Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor of Education
The 1960s and 70s saw many upheavals in which schools across the country were directly involved. Teachers became more militant, battling for (and sometimes against) civil rights, community control of schools, anti-poverty programs and the end of the Vietnam war. Native American and Latino education took on new urgency. Unions again entered the fray, this time over collective bargaining rights, school funding and another round of pay and benefit issues. As America moved towards the 1980s, other concerns dominated. The public seemed convinced that American schools were failing, and that teachers must be at least partly responsible.
The 1983 report "A Nation at Risk" depicted teachers who were both underqualified and underpaid, working in poor conditions, achieving poor results. A follow-up report in 1986, "A Nation Prepared," laid the foundations for a new professionalism and a new Standards movement. It proposed improving teacher education, restructuring the teaching force and giving teachers greater say in how they met new requirements for student achievement. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was born the next year to provide a clearing-house for national recognition and certification of exemplary teachers.
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Board of Education, 1971
Sixteen years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court further clarified its Brown decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg. In 1969, the Swanns, an African-American family in Charlotte, North Carolina, brought suit when their children were not allowed to attend the city's white schools. In its ruling, the Supreme Court stated that all schools within a given district didn't strictly have to reflect the district's racial make-up. But, the Court argued, all-black or all-white schools must not be the result of deliberate policies of segregation. The Supreme Court justices then went a step further and suggested that bussing would be an acceptable means of achieving integration.
1990s to the Present
"There's really nothing more rewarding than seeing a student who has incredible potential being reborn as a good student." -- Alex White, Teacher, New York, 2000
At the start of the new millennium, teachers remain ambivalent about the effects of these developments. They are discouraged by the public perception of schools, but heartened by the public will to give education the attention it deserves. They lament the comparatively poor pay and lack of respect that teaching still commands, but see improvement ahead. They are wary of rigid dictates on how to do their work, but excited by the many new forms schools can take today. They remain inspired and challenged by their students, which is what makes staying in the classroom worthwhile.
Assessing Students
Assessing students' work has become an increasingly controversial issue over the past decade. Should teachers and the public rely on results of standardized tests, on multi-faceted portfolios of a student's work developed over time, on judgments about a student's process and progress in learning, or on a student's finished product? The divide between those who favor assessing process and those who support evaluating a final product has provoked wide debate both in and out of the classroom. As states impose standardized exams on schools, many teachers complain that a single, one-shot test can't provide a clear picture of a student's progress or higher-order thinking skills. On the other hand, the public largely believes that all students should master a common body of knowledge, appropriate to a given age. Many educators favor what they call authentic assessment, essentially a compromise between the two schools of evaluation. Authentic assessment looks at actual performance, through tests or complex projects, but also requires attention to learning process, synthesis of different modes of learning and student reflection on what they've accomplished and how. Portfolio assessment sometimes falls under this rubric, since it provides a compilation of different forms of learning: papers, projects, and journals, for example. Teachers voice one reservation about these forms of evaluation, however: they are simply too labor-intensive granted most teachers' workload. Many teachers see up to 150 students a day, and they say that, even with the best will in the world, they're hard put to do justice to that many comprehensive student portfolios.
The Standards Movement
The call for uniform, high standards in teaching and learning has echoed throughout American history. Catharine Beecher and Horace Mann despaired of the low standards for teachers in the mid-19th century; 50 or 60 years later Progressive educators like John Dewey complained about ineffective teaching methods; all Americans worried about the state of our children's learning in the 1950s in the wake of the Russian rocket Sputnik, and in the 1980s we were convinced we were a "Nation At Risk" because of our low educational standards. With each outcry has come a new determination to define and implement better standards for our schools.
The 21st-century Standards Movement has taken several different forms, primarily relating to curriculum, teacher training and performance, and student achievement. What Standards enthusiasts want to see, in essence, is a well-defined body of knowledge and guidelines that would indicate what students should know and when. This sounds simple, but the problem, of course, lies in agreeing on the knowledge to be acquired and the means of assessment. These are contentious issues. But whatever standards prevail, both teachers and students will feel the effects.
Potentially, a lot is riding on the outcome of the Standards Movement. For teachers, at issue may be classroom autonomy, ability to overcome larger social forces like poverty, and even financial compensation (as some authorities want to tie pay to student achievement). Teachers want their students to succeed, but hope that assessment, both for them and for their students, will take a variety of factors - like social conditions and local consensus -- into consideration. Other people put their faith in standardized exams for both teachers and students, since the tests would define the body of knowledge to be mastered and indicate whether that knowledge had, in fact, been absorbed. Still others argue that we suffer from too much standardization already and need a more thoughtful, individualized approach to raising the quality of teaching and learning. These are issues that will not be resolved soon, though many states are deeply committed to standards-based initiatives.
Assessing Teachers
Public concern with the preparedness and quality of the nation's teachers has generated a great deal of publicity recently. Ironically, most people, even if they express concern about teachers in general, report that they like and support their own children's teachers. But personal feeling aside, the nation has had no overarching means of assessing teachers until recently. States have tried various means of determining the quality of teaching, but these attempts have been localized and often criticized as inadequate. Local systems usually rely on an in-house administrator to evaluate teachers and make recommendations about retention and tenure. Increasingly, however, school districts have included some form of peer review, which permits teachers to judge and learn from each other. In some cities, unions play a role in teacher assessment, though the public and many school boards are wary of union involvement in evaluation.
Many educators believe that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards addresses the problem of broader teacher assessment. The NBPTS now grants national teacher certification for seasoned professionals, based on complex performance assessments and examinations. Teachers must submit lesson plans and videos of their teaching, as well as lengthy and reflective journals about what they've done and why. The process of receiving national certification is rigorous, so limited numbers of teachers have undertaken it and not all teachers succeed on their first try. But many teachers have commented that they have become better teachers in the process.