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Starting in 1893 with the Committee of Ten and spanning until 1995 with Critical Race Theory. This timeline takes a closer look at significant events and people who help shape and form the curriculum in America.
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Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago co-founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Star in 1889. Jane would run the Hull House until her death in 1935.
Jane would provide social and educational opportunities for working-class residents. Some of these classes would include Literature, History, Art, and Domestic Activities.
John Dewey was said to be a good friend of Jane Addams and would often be at Hull House to offer lectures. -
Jane Addams was most famous for her settlement house in Chicago, the Hull House. The Hull House was a network of houses that focused on social reform and education, which Jane was incredibly passionate about.
Throughout her life, Jane Addams wrote several works that would inspire many educators to alter and improve their curriculums and classrooms. Her concept of education has a practical application, a concept teachers are returning to. -
Eliot was the President of Harvard University when the Committee of Ten was being formed. He was asked to be the committee's chairman for his work in both the higher education system and the elementary and secondary school system.
He was a Humanist, which is a more student-centered approach to education.
Though the report from the Committee of Ten did have some of his humanist influence, there was a compromise. -
In 1893 the Committee of Ten was enacted to initially solve the issue of uniform college entrance requirements.
Their report and recommendations for future curricula would be greeted with praise and heavy criticism.
Notable figures in the Committee of Ten were Charles W. Eliot (Chairman) and William T. Harris.
A major critic of the report was Stanley Hall -
He was another prominent member of the Committee of Ten and in the education community. He was a highly regarded Superintendent of schools in St. Louis. William was also a humanist and would go on to be the chairman of the Committee of Fifteen in 1895. -
Stanley Hall was a prominent critic of the report given by the Committee of Ten. Being a developmentalist, the educational thought that the child's natural development should be the basis and determining factors in what should be taught.
Hall would be a significant reform in early elementary education, determining that prior to the age of eight, children should partake in play and not be overtaxed by harmful intellectual tasks (p. 40 Struggle of American Curriculum). -
John Dewey founded the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, or Dewey Schools, and would become a significant part of the pedagogy and curriculum history.
This is mainly due to the pedagogical reform that happened there. Prior to his departure from the University of Chicago, John was school mainly focused on elementary curriculum. The school was famous for not following one particular pedagogical practice but integrating and using many. -
Montessori was a pioneering educator whose innovative approach to education has had a profound influence on the field. Her educational philosophy, the Montessori Method, emphasized the importance of independence, self-directed learning, and developing a child's natural curiosity and abilities. Montessori believed that children are inherently capable of guiding their learning and that the role of the educator is to create a carefully prepared environment that nurtures their growth. -
W.E.B. Du Bois was a prominent social rights activist and significant in the education community. He was among the first black men to be awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard. He advocated that education should be a way to better yourself, particularly the African American community education should be a stepping stone to equality.
He has several works, but one of his most prominent is The Strivings of the Negro people, published in 1897, but his works reached until the middle of the 1900s. -
John is among the most famous and recognizable names in education and curriculum. Dewey was notably known for pedagogical reform, integrating the different interest groups and ideas about curriculum as he sought to reform it. John wrote several publications about educational reform, including the Monograph published in 1913 on the interest and efforts of education (Tyler,1987).
John founded the Dewey School in 1896, as well as a good friend of Jane Addams, and would frequent the Hull House. -
Washington was a prominent black educator and author who fought for the advanced black in the U.S. during the late 1800s-1915. Born a slave, Washington became a leading advocate for education and social progress.
Washington advocated for a more gradual integration and urged blacks to seek an industrial education and become an absolute necessity in American culture.
Washington founded Tuskegee University, a historically black college that has educated an extensive array of people for decades. -
By 1917 vocational education became an integral part of the curriculum. It was not simply a single subject but one that connected and ran through many other subjects as the need for work-related applications in education became widespread. Essentially if you were not college bound, your education became more vocationalized.
Vocational education would become a long-lasting and far-reaching area of the curriculum. -
John Bobbitt was a prominent educationist whose central ideal, particularly in the 1910s, was to eliminate unnecessariness in the curriculum. Bobbitt argued that curriculum and schools should be taught with more efficiency. By carefully adapting the curriculum to a teacher's classroom, there can be ways to make that curriculum efficient for students.
He has also noted that no curriculum encompasses all human activity, and as educators, we need to focus on direct experiences. -
Starting in 1919, several schools started experimenting with their curriculum, many ditching the teacher-designed curriculum for ones that the students developed independently and focused on the individual student more. Marietta Johnson and Stanwood Cobb created the organization and would eventually settle on Progressive Education Association. In 1928 Dewey became president and cautioned against the emphasis on the individual student. These experimental schools would reach its peak in the 1930s. -
Edward Thorndike was influential in the field of education. He was known for his experiments that disproved many conventional thoughts, such as students' ability to transfer knowledge. he would become recognized for his various experiments on the effects of learning starting in 1913 and continuing through 1924. In his 1924 experiment, he concluded that native intelligence was significantly more critical and valuable than specialized learning. -
George S. Counts was a renowned American educator who contributed to critical pedagogy and progressive education. Much like Jane Addams, Counts also shared a friendship with John. In 1930 he published one of his notable works, the book "American Road to Culture," which provided a critical analysis of the American education system and called for a more inclusive and democratic approach to education. -
The PEA conducted an eight-year study in 1932- 1940 that allowed thirty schools to become "unshackled" by the college domination in the secondary school curriculum. The thought was to provide their students with a more unique and individualized curriculum.
This experiment would help create the concept of hybridization of curriculum, where you still have your core curriculum. However, now you also emphasize the student's interests within the curriculum. -
As WWII ended, the curriculum discussion came back to the forefront with a report in 1940 about "What High Schools Ought to Teach." There came a review of the curriculum throughout the years and what subjects kept being prominent and valuable. These would, in turn, become known as core subjects. Though vocational schools are still prominent, they provide much more specialized education. By the 1950s, the core curriculum would gain momentum. -
On October 4, 1957, Americans would leave their homes to witness the first satellite orbit in the sky. The only problem was that it was a satellite from Russia, not the United States. The success of Russia's Sputnik drove fear into the mind of the American public. The country realized it needed to improve in the space race.
With the launch of Sputnik came a rush to reform our education with a considerable emphasis on Science and Math divisions, what would become known as S.T.E.M. -
The N.D.E.A. was one of the science initiatives President Eisenhower signed into law directly responding to Russia's Sputnik. The growing fear that we were critically behind the scientific advances of Russia and thus vulnerable to an Attack during the Cold War.
The N.D.E.A. would increase national budgets for S.T.E.M.-based subjects and programs throughout American schools to remain on top as a superpower in the world. This act has drastically changed the school curriculum. -
In 1995 scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings introduced CRT to the field of education with her work in the article “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education.” CRT emphasizes the examination of historical narratives, shedding light on the often-marginalized perspectives and experiences of racial and ethnic minorities.
In Social Studies, CRT can contribute to a more inclusive and accurate understanding of history by challenging dominant narratives and incorporating diverse voices and perspectives.