Bullets for Common School Era
page numbers refer to Joel Spring book
* Common school reformers believed that education could be used to assure the dominance of Protestant Anglo-American culture, reduce tensions between classes, eliminate crime and poverty, stabilize the political system, and form patriotic citizens. (Spring, p. 103)
* Reform schools, Charity Schools, and the Lancastrian School all strove to provide a moral family structure that was felt missing or gone array in society.
* Charity Schools based on the Lancastrian (industrialized/factory the educational process down to the groups of kids marching, receiving instruction and march back, p 71- 72) system (bottom page 66-67). Common schools used the same arguments as the Lancastrian schools to validate and promote their ideology.
* Lessons required children to memorize questions and answers, which perpetuated and authoritarian method of instruction (p.62).
* Textbooks determined the content of the instruction (p.123). The debate was between what curriculum was to be taught: preparation for life and occupation or formal instruction to form a disciplined mind and wisdom to ponder the larger questions about life and its meaning. In the early years, 1820 – 1880’s it was focused on the disciplines of the mind and only later with in the industrialized age did the curriculum shift to a preparation for life and occupation skills.
* Kaestle argued that the common school was specifically designed to provide political education that taught a common set of beliefs, emphasized the exercise of intelligence and prompted a respect for the law, “schooling should stress unity, obedience, restraint, self-sacrifice, and the careful exercise of the intelligence” (p127)
Rush Welter argued that the distinction between the workingmen’s concept of the common school and Mann’s ideology was that it was offering education for the working class to learn to protect itself from the elite (p127). “Arming the working class against the authority and power of the upper class”.
Katz argued that the common school was not an accident put a plan to discipline a population to serve the need of an industrialized society. (p.127).
Cutri postulated contradicting statements. One, he praised Mann for the ideology to educate all classes of society but then is critical of the conservative ides held by Mann. (p 125)
* Between 1825 and 1858 more than 60 periodicals were created devoted to education. (p. 106)
Massachusetts Common School Journal ed. Horace Mann
Connecticut Common School Journal ed. Henry Barnard
Ohio Common School Director Ed. Samuel Lewis
Organizations: held lectures and convections to spread the Common School ideology (p.107):
the salvation of society from its ills.
1824 American Sunday School union
1825 American Lyceum
1829 Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers
1828 The Yale report
1830 American Institute of Instruction
TEXTBOOKS:
Noah Webster: textbooks should have a curriculum that produces a good and patriotic American.
1783 Spelling Book and Dictionary
1784 Grammar Book
1784 Reader
American Bible
1829 Peter Parley Method of Telling about Geography to Children by Samuel Goodrich
1841 One of the premiere U.S. children's magazines of its day, the Museum published the work of the most important authors for children
McGuffey's Readers 1841-1870 introduce children to ethical code.
http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/mcguffey.html
1841 First reader The child modeled in this book is prompt, good, kind, honest and truthful. This first book contained fifty-five lessons
1841 Second reader, it contained reading and spelling with eighty-five lessons, sixteen pictures and one-hundred sixty-six pages. It outlined history, biology, astronomy, zoology, botany; table manners, behavior towards family, attitudes toward God and teachers, the poor; the great and the good.
Third reader, rules for oral reading of its fifty-seven lessons. This book contained only three pictures and was designed for a more mature mind, of junior high standing today
Forth reader, good literature. It contained British poetry and used the Bible among it's selections. This text was addressed to the highest grade in schools, it's difficulty compared to that of American secondary schools. It discussed Napoleon Bonaparte, Puritan fathers, women, God, education, religion and philosophy.
Fifth reader
1870 Rules and Regulations for the management and government of Common School
1885 Sixth reader was designed for elocutionary exercises to increase articulation, inflection, pitch, accent, rate, emphasis and gesture. It contained poetry and prose by Sigourney, Montgomery, Addison, Irving, Young and Byron.