The Americanization of Education - How have ethnocentric values impacted the evolvement of the American educational system?
By aforan
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In the beginnings of America, there wasn’t any solid educational structure within the colonies. It was assumed that parents would pass down whatever education and knowledge they had. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, laws were passed that required parents to teach their children to read. Furthermore, towns with at least 50 households were required to hire a teacher & towns with 100 households to build a ‘public’ school.
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The laws requiring that a child receives a certain degree of teaching and attend school DID NOT inherently result in all children being granted equal access to schools. Race, gender, religious affiliation, class and social status were factored into the equation. Religious groups applied differing values to education within their own communities - some valuing only basic trade skills and others valuing reading and writing. These laws ALSO did not necessarily stretch past their colony of origin.
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Webster was a schoolteacher whose aim was to instill unified patriotic values in his students. He implemented a distinctly American culture into his classroom free of any European influence so as to be superior in its language, learning, and social standing. The foundation laid for his students was very political, religious, and ethnocentric in regards to White America. His publications and therefore his values and philosophies swept the nation.
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In 1783 Noah Webster, known as the Schoolmaster of America, authored the Blue Backed Speller. The book was purposed to transform the way English was taught and learned in schools and furthermore, to project a set of values onto its readers.
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In the post Civil War 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court deemed racially segregated public schools and facilities as legal and constitutional as long as schools for both white people and black people were of the same quality and standards. This justified the idea of “separate but equal” education.
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The 1896 Supreme Court decision of separate but equal education / segregation in schools was overruled by the case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Racial segregation in public schools was deemed illegal. While this decision initiated the process of integration, it did not outline what that process would look like for schools across the nation. The ruling was met with society upheaval, and it took many years for the ruling to be fully implemented.
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Linked is a voiceover of the Memorandum from the British National Archives and pictured is a photocopy of it. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/civil-rights-in-america/school-segregation/
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The government has become increasingly involved in educational systems. Legislation and funding in regards to educational reform are of constant debate in political races. It is clear that there are communities across the nation who do not have the same opportunities as others because of their physical and societal location. In 2001, Pres. George Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act which increased funding to at risk students in the hope that there would be educational progress as a return.
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Linked is a video news report on the No Child Left Behind Act and what it entailed. There has since been multiple educational reforms by President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, each controversial and not universally accepted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EOrlOKkZq4
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Being of the most powerful nations in the world, America's values have reached across oceans. Linked is an article titled "The Americanization of European Higher Education and Research. Pictured is a segment from said article. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Coervers/publication/45143441_The_Americanization_of_European_Higher_Education_and_Research/links/53f4a6600cf2fceacc6e956d/The-Americanization-of-European-Higher-Education-and-Research.pdf?origin=publication_detail
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Although America is a young country in comparison to other nations around the globe, it holds a strong power and influence. While it has prided itself on its educational systems, standards and values, history has proven the struggle this nation has had with ethnocentric thought and white superiority specifically in regards to education. Although we have evolved with societal shifts of values and open-mindedness and legislature, there is still a divide in accessibility and equality in education.
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2000s
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Coervers/publication/45143441_The_Americanization_of_European_Higher_Education_and_Research/links/53f4a6600cf2fceacc6e956d/The-Americanization-of-European-Higher-Education-and-Research.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www2.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EOrlOKkZq4
