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The root of American education started in the Jamestown colony, which was the first English settlement in North America. Religion was a huge part of this colony. The English believed it was their job to spread gospel and religion to this newfound land and to convert these Native Americans to Protestant Christianity (the English’s primary religion at the time). King James was trying to combat the French and Spanish who were trying to convert the Native Americans to Roman Catholicism.
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Life in the Southern colonies revolved around agriculture, often on plantations where African slaves and indentured servants worked on land owned by wealthy landlords. If your parents weren’t wealthy, you probably wouldn’t have gone to school at all. Life for most people in the colonial South was hard, and formal education was a luxury reserved for those with money. Private tutors often lived on plantations, or parents pooled their resources to hire a tutor for the children of several families.
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Benjamin Franklin opened the Academy of Philadelphia in 1751. Free of religious orientation and uniquely American, Franklin’s academy was a secondary school that focused on the practical needs of colonial America. Math, navigation, astronomy, bookkeeping, logic, and rhetoric were all taught, and both boys and girls attended. This created a precedent in which students were able to pick electives and classes which is still used in present day secondary educations.
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The federal government established a role for itself in public education. Although not directly involved in governing or operating schools, the federal government provided financial support for schools and education, a tradition that is still in place to this day. With respect to education, the lines of responsibility between state and federal governments were being blurred.
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The Constitution removes formal religion from the schools and establishes state responsibility in education. The original colonies were very religiously diverse, and because of this diversity, our country’s founders concluded that no religion should be placed above others. This led to the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment, which prohibited the government from passing legislation to establish any one official religion over another.
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The Constitution of the United States requires that religion and public school be kept separate from each other. It is not okay to advocate for one religion over another in school anymore because it violates the principle of separation of church and state. However, it is okay to speak generally on the topic of religion.
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“Public” schools often charged some sort of tuition, discouraging all but the wealthiest from attending. States didn’t coordinate their efforts, and the quality of education was uneven at best. This began to change about 1820, when the common school movement, a historic attempt to make education available to all children in the United States, began.
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Horace Mann, a lawyer turned educator, was a key figure in making education available to all children. He was an outspoken advocate for public education, believing that education was “the great equalizer of the conditions of men” and that it was the key to developing our country and improving the quality of life for all people.
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During the Common School Movement, 50% of American children were enrolled in public schools. By the middle 1860s, 28 of 35 states had established state boards of education. Lastly, during the Common School Movement, states and local governments began to tax citizens directly to support public schools, and tax-supported public elementary schools were firmly established as a cornerstone of our country’s educational system.
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Merchants and artisans enthusiastically supported this new school. By 1860, a quarter of a million students were "enrolled in 6,000 tuition-charging academies, and they were the most common type of high school until about 1890." They shifted emphasis to a practical, career-oriented curriculum, they removed religion from the curriculum, and they were partially supported by public funds, all principles still seen in todays education system.
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Booker T. Washington established the Tuskegee Institute in 1881. Short of resources, he had his students build the school themselves, and this hands-on approach to learning illustrates his strategy for bettering the education and lives of African Americans in the South. His philosophy surrounding the belief that hard work, practical training, and economic cooperation with Whites were the reasons he was often invited to address White audiences on the topic of African American education.
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Created "cardinal principles of education," which included applied goals in health and civic education. This principle applied basic skills, such as reading and math, together with vocational education, personal health, worthy home membership, civic education, effective use of leisure time, and ethical character To accommodate these more applied goals, the commission proposed the idea of comprehensive high schools with different tracks for different students. Promoted diversity within students.
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In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the principle of "separate but equal" was established. In education, the policy was implemented by creating separate schools with different curricula, teaching methods, teachers, and resources. However, the case of Brown v. The Board of Education overruled the Plessy case decision, and hence desegregated schools. This was a milestone decision that changed life for all African Americans-- for the better.
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Believing the United States was losing the technology war, the US government authorized an increase in the funding of the National Science Foundation. This was intended to enhance “the security of the nation” by improving instruction in math, science, and foreign languages.
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Legislation during the 1970s gave Native Americans greater control over their schools, and more recently, the federal government shifted responsibility for Native American education from tribal schools to public schools. However, problems for Native Americans in education still exist. For example, Native American students consistently score below white students in standardized tests, and have higher high school dropout rates than both Whites and the general population.
