As American as Public Schools1900 - 1950

• 80% of 500 students said they would rather work than attend school• 6% of students graduated in 1900• 50% of children were in school• Schools were scary due to inappropriate medical care• 1910 - 2 million children were in school

Education at the Turn of the Century

• A new way of running public schools, including social, emotional, and physical content.

• The school’s goal was to make “every scholar a working man, and every working man a scholar.”

• Involved students switching classes many times a day.• Students took part in running the school, (preparing materials, preparing

lunch, etc.)• Children were taught animal husbandry, art, and nature in addition to

regular classroom work.

The Gary Plan

• Immigrants arrived in America and signed their children up for public school the very next day.

• With such high percentages of students being immigrants, the education system was seen as a way to socialize citizens to the “American” way of life.

• All subjects were taught in english• Goal - Americanizing immigrants, including students and parents.

School teaches American Way of Life

• Burned books written in German• Began testing soldiers as a way to identify potential leaders

WW1

• As the schools expanded and added new programs, new bureaucratic issues arose.

• High schools were being added at the rate of one per day

Expansion of the School

• Students stopped going to school because they wanted to be wise, they went in order to get a job.

• The IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test was introduced into the school system. o This was originally used on US Army Recruits.o Those who embraced the IQ scale, believed it should be used to push

those with high IQ scores to be the leaders of the country.o IQ scores were believed by some to determine the quality of a person

and predict academic ability. o IQ testing, which was very subjective, resulted in different scores for

people of different ethnicities.

Education as a Career Path

• The school system went really far with the “aptitude” tests.• Tests showed what areas you were likely to be gifted in, and were very

subjective.• The problem with IQ testing was that it wrote off anyone without a high

IQ score.• Heavily reliant on analogy questions. This is a problem because these

types of questions were very language/culture dependent. • High school courses were determined by IQ scores.

IQ Continued

• Students who were judged incapable of handling challenging academic courses were forced into industrial training schools, training them for work in factories.

• Eventually, students were forced into separate schools based on their ethnicity. This is because it was assumed that non-anglo-American students were not likely to achieve academically.

Industrial Training Schools

• Since the 60% of students that were not determined to be high achievers weren’t getting much out of school, “life adjustment education” was created.

• This taught average students about the basic skills of life: Dating etiquette, making fishing lures, grooming, how to choose a dentist, etc.

• Eventually, this was removed, because it became obvious about how silly it is to think that an average American needs help to do basic life tasks. Academics were soon returned to the classroom.

Life Adjustment Education

• Socialism and collectivism were evil words during this time period. • Schools threw out textbooks that mentioned anything resembling these

concepts.• After the USSR launched Sputnik, the US was very interested in

advancing the education system to keep up with Russia.• Funding was poured into the public school system, but with a defined

interest in math and science.

Cold War Politics