Summary+of+Time+Period

=**Rise of American Public Education** = = = =**1776-1860.** =

The nation's founders believed everyone should have a good education, but they feared the tyranny of a central authority. For this reason they left control of schools to individual states, making no mention of education in the Constitution. In 1785 Congress passed an ordinance providing for distribution of public federal lands to encourage education.

Since many communities were isolated, the states left actual control of schools to local government units. As families moved into outlying parts of the Northern towns, many children lived too far from the town school to be able to attend it. In time, the towns were divided into districts, each district being responsible for a school supervised by a local committee. The one-room ungraded district school had pupils of every age, often under an untrained or poorly trained teacher.

In the early 1800's many states depended mainly on private schools for the well-to-do and charity schools for the poor. Many children attended neither. One attempt to solve the problem of how to pay for education was the organization of Lancasterian, or monitorial, schools in some cities. In such a school, 200 to 1,000 pupils assembled in a large hall under one teacher. The teacher taught only the brighter and older pupils, who then acted as monitors, each teaching a group of about 10 pupils while the one teacher supervised. The cost was said to be about one dollar per year per pupil. This method, first used in England, was developed by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster.

Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, and other educational reformers began insisting that in a democratic country everyone must be educated free. Reform and labor organizations tried to abolish child labor by proposing laws requiring children between certain ages to attend school. Massachusetts passed the first state compulsory school attendance law in 1852.

Growth in population, commerce, and industry led to greater demands on the schools. In 1821 Boston opened the first public high school; it was for boys only. A movement for high schools that gave general and commercial education as well as college preparation began to grow. The little red schoolhouse was becoming outmoded. As good roads were built, small district schools were replaced by consolidated schools organized on a township or county basis. Courses of study were expanded; better training of teachers was provided; state governments began setting standards for teachers, school buildings, and supplies.

Unlike the Latin grammar schools, some of the 19th-century academies enrolled girls. Boston had a girls' high school in 1826. Chicago started a coeducational high school in 1856. Oberlin College in the 1830's became the first degree-granting school in the nation to admit both men and women.

The Morrill Act (1862) allotted public lands for the establishment of state agricultural and technical colleges, which came to be called land-grant colleges. Many state universities got their start as land-grant institutions.

A number of 19th-century European thinkers influenced American education. In Germany, Johann Herbart showed how teacher training could be improved, and Friedrich Froebel started the kindergarten movement. In England, Herbert Spencer argued that the curriculum of the schools should include science and other material that would be of use in actual life. [|The Rise of Public Education]

**Break-Down of 1776-1860 in Education**


 * Classroom Environment || One room; one teacher; 20-40 students; shared benches/desks; individual slates with chalk; central chalkboard at front with teacher’s desk at front; wooden; plain; Bible; wood or coal burning stove/furnace; oil lamps; water well outside and outhouse outside ||
 * Demographics of Students || Primarily white Protestant children ages 7-14 grouped together in one room; blacks and native Americans, as well as Catholics were discouraged from attending; sons/daughters of pioneer, hard-working parents ||
 * Demographics of Teachers || Young, single, teenaged Protestant white women with 6th grade degrees ||
 * Curriculum || Free; focus on history, reading, writing, arithmetic, citizenship values/virtues, social and moral ‘frame’, leadership, “Republican Machines”, Bible plus textbooks (readers/spellers), women focused on domestic engineering skills ||
 * Philosophies || Uphold new Republic citizenship values and ideals; assimilate those moving to America from other countries/cultures ||
 * Men in Education & Political Influence || Mann, Webster, Rush, Jefferson, Jackson, Washington, Franklin, McGuffey, Barnard, Stowe, Wiley, Pestalozzi, Maclure, Owen ||
 * Women in Education || Abigail Adams, Catherine Beecher, Mary Lyon, Judith Sargent Murray, Mercy Warren,Emma Willard ||
 * Religion in Education || Protestant and Unitarian ||
 * Race in Education || Primarily White Anglo-Saxon; African Americans, Native Americans and Irish Catholics educated separately by force or choice depending on group ||
 * Historical Events || See Timeline ||

MEN IN EDUCATION (CONTINUED)
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 * ROBERT OWENS **


 * BENJAMIN RUSH **

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**WOMEN IN EDUCATION (CONTINUED) **

 * ABIGAIL ADAMS **

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<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> [|Judith Sargent Murray]
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY **


 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">MERCY WARREN **

> Abner D. Jones, ed., // The Illustrated American Biography //, vol. 3 (1855), p. 107. || ==**<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: left;"> <span class="name_title">MERCY OTIS WARREN (1728 – 1814) **== <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: left;"> Like most girls of her generation, Mercy Otis Warren received no formal education during her childhood in Barnstable, Massachusetts , and she learned to read and write by occasionally sitting in on her brothers' lessons and browsing through her uncle's library. In 1754 she married James Warren, with whom she remained in Massachusetts and had five sons. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: left;"> As revolutionary sentiment intensified throughout New England, Mercy Warren's family and home grew involved in public affairs. Her father, husband, and brother all held civil service positions with which they were becoming increasingly frustrated, and leading opponents of royal policy, Sam and John Adams among them, gathered in the Warrens' house in Plymouth to debate politics. Sympathizing with the call for revolution, Mercy Warren composed political poetry and, though she had most likely never seen a staged performance, she wrote dramas which satirized Massachusetts 's royal government. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: left;"> A Jeffersonian believer in the potential for self-rule, Mercy Warren provoked controversy with the publication of her //Observations on the New Constitution//, in which she argued against ratification of the federalist constitution. Her Jeffersonian perspective also infuses her three-volume //History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution// (in response to which John Adams, believing he had been slighted, remarked that "history is not the Providence of Ladies"). She died in Plymouth at the age of eighty-six. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: left;"> Other portraits appear in: > <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Elizabeth F. Ellet, //The Women of the American Revolution// (1848), v. 1, frontispiece. > <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Sarah J. Hale, ed., //Woman’s Record// (1853), p. 546; also 1855 ed. > <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Evert A. and George L. Duyckinck, eds., //Cyclopaedia// //of American Literature// (1855), vol. 1, p. 163. > <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">//The American Phrenological Journal//, vol. 22 (Sept., 1855), p. 53. > [|Mercy Warren] ||
 * [[image:http://www.librarycompany.org/women/portraits/images/Ports/warren.jpg width="245" height="331" caption="MERCY O. WARREN (1728 – 1814)" link="@http://www.librarycompany.org/women/portraits/images/Ports/Large_Ports/warren_lg.jpg"]]
 * [[image:http://www.librarycompany.org/women/portraits/images/Ports/warren.jpg width="245" height="331" caption="MERCY O. WARREN (1728 – 1814)" link="@http://www.librarycompany.org/women/portraits/images/Ports/Large_Ports/warren_lg.jpg"]]