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Noah Webster Publishes American Textbooks
Noah Webster published the first American textbooks, a speller, a grammar, and a reader. He believed American children should be taught from American texts and used his passion for linguistics to begin standardizing American English and American spellings. He was a secularist who resented the emphasis his primary education had on religion. He wanted to emphasize the study of the English language over Greek and Latin. He also emphasized a version of phonetic teaching for reading. -
McGuffey Readers Published
McGuffey used his readers to promote a moral and spiritual education as well as literacy. His readers were of increasing complexity, included stories easily memorized, and lots of repetition. This attitude is in contrast to Websters more scholarly, political, and secular purposes for teaching children English. We begin to see the difference between English education as a scholarly pursuit and a means to teach moral lessons. -
Progressive Education Association Founded
This organization became very influential. Their philosophy emphasized the social-emotional needs of students. They encouraged learning by doing and the social aspects of education through discussion. This would probably have influenced the structure of ELA education because teachers would pick texts that they feel their students can relate to and they would encourage discussion and project based learning. -
Whole Language Education
Proponents of whole language education argued that solely emphasizing spelling and grammar in small chunks did not adequately teach children the true meaning of language in context. They believed in a natural acquisition of language and encouraged frequently reading, literacy across content, and frequent writing. They came under criticism for creating poor spellers and students who lacked the basic understanding of grammar to understand more complex texts. -
WWW Platform Released and Free to All
CERN decides to release the www platform to be free to all to use. This marks the beginning of the internet era and changed the way society thinks of education and the way schools must teach. -
Release of Common Core State Standards
On this date the Common Core State Standards were released. 42 states adopted these standards over the following months. These standards changed ELA curriculum because through what they call the "ELA Shifts". These shifts increase text complexity, emphasize non-fiction, and emphasize discussion of texts based on text evidence. -
1989 Education Summit
The beginning of the switch to standards based education. This impacted language arts instruction because teachers no longer taught texts they taught standards. This began the push for standardized testing. -
Civil Rights Movement
Throughout the next two decades concepts of which texts need to be taught will begin to change. The Civil Rights Movement and later similar movements will lead to the realization that literature that was traditionally taught in the classroom did not adequately represent America.