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Major cities in colonial America are required to have schools but they are not rquired in smaller towns. This is an important first step in American Education. Most Americans can read enough to read papers and pay taxes.
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Noah Webster calls for British texts to be removed from the new nation’s schools. He offers a new text book, The Blue Backed Speller, which teaches children the English language while learning about the United States. This was the forerunner to his American Dictionary.
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Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, calls on a general education for three years per student paid for by taxes. He cites the need for citizens of the new democracy to know the basics of their government and be able to read and write because they have to vote their officials.
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Horace Manncallss for free tax supported schools. He becomes the first Secretary of Education on the Massachusetts Board of Education. So dedicated is he that during his tenure in that position he visits and logs in detail visits to over 1 thousand school houses.
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Immigration, especially from Ireland, brought multitudes of people of other faiths than the dominant one at the time. Some school texts were even prejudice and racist against the new immigrants. This was the start over the debate about religion in schools. The debates were very heated and emotional.
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African Americans are free to have education in the North, but still the North was segregated and schools for blacks were far and few. This was still better than in the South whhere it is still illegal for blacks to learn how to read and write.
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Bible riots in Philadelphia kill 13 and wound many more. This event brings to a head the debate of religion in public schools.
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Board of Education replaces the Public School Society. This change brings in elected officials to the decision making process. Most religions are now represented.
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Fredrick Douglas tries unsuccessfully to desegregate schools. This would be the first step in a process that would take the next one hundred years to complete.
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Segregated schools in Massachusetts are abolished. This marks the first time segregation is stopped in the United States. This idea would take the next one hundred years to spread to the entire country.
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The Confederate States of America are defeated, suddenly over 4 million slaves are free to go to school. They are willing and literacy soars from 5 percent to 70 percent. While this is outstanding, the schools blacks are forced to go to are not.
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two million children are not going to school, they are working. Child labor is common in this time. When asked 80 percent of the children want to be in a factory over a school. This tells of how schools were.
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John Dewey introduces a new way of teaching. This later becomes known as Gary's Plan. It is the concept of keeping children busy and switching them to different classes through the day. It is in over 30 schools in New York.
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The Supreme Court Abolishes Segregation in schools across the United States of America. A huge step in The Civil Rights Movement but it would'nt be enforced for another ten years.
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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed. It is now a Federal law. Any federally funded institution i.e. schools that discriminates or wont desegregate can have federal funds taken away. The long awaited struggle in our nation whose first step was taken over a hundred years before is completed. School should be equal for all and segregated schools are inherently unequal.
