Modern US Education History, 1865
to 1920
Module 2.5
Compulsory Education laws were passed
in Massachusetts in 1852, and by 32 states in 1900, and in all states by
1930.
African
Americans
Booker T
Washington (1856-1915)
Booker T
Washington attended one of the country's first institutions of higher
education for African Americans, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute of
Virginia.Four years after graduation, he returned to be the school's first
African American instructor. He also helped to found Tuskegee Institute in 1880.
This was an industrial school for African Americans in rural Alabama.
William E.
Burghardt Dubois (1868-1963) was the first African American to be awarded a
Ph.D. and one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP). He challenged Booker T. Washington's ideas on education.
He criticized educational programs that seemed to imply that African Americans
should accept inferior status and develop manual skills.
Teaching as a
profession....
After the Civil War, the idea of early
childhood education spread. Margarethe Schurz (1832-1876) opened the first
Kindergarten, or "garden where children grow" class in her home in Watertown,
Wisconsin in 1855. Professional teaching organizations began to influence the
development of American schools. The National Education Association (NEA) was
founded in 1857. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was founded in 1916.
These organizations worked to professionalized teaching and increase teaching
salaries and benefits. By the early 1900's, the demand for teachers grew, and an
increasing number of woman entered the profession. The following is a contract
the teachers were required to sign in 1927:
Teacher
Contract
I promise to take vital
interest in all phases of Sunday-school work, donating of my time,
service, and money without stint for the uplift and benefit of the
community.
I promise to abstain
from all dancing, immodest dressing, and any other conduct unbecoming a
teacher and a lady.
I promise not to go out
with any young man except in so far as it may be necessary to stimulate
Sunday-school work.
I promise not to fall
in love, to become engaged or secretly married.
I promise not to
encourage or tolerate the least familiarity on the part of any of my boy
pupils.
I promise to sleep at
least eight hours a night, to eat carefully, and to take every precaution
to keep in the best health and spirits, in order that I may be better able
to render efficient service to my pupils.
I promise to remember
that I owe a duty to the townspeople who are paying me my wages, that I
owe respect to the school board and the superintendent that hired me, and
that I shall consider myself at all times the willing servant of the
school board and the townspeople. |
Activity 1
Write a paragraph about the image of teachers and teaching reflected in
this contract. How does this image differ from today's image of teaching
and teachers? |
 
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