Reasons for establishment for common or public school

1.      educating students for good citizenship

2.      ending poverty and crime

3.      stimulating national economic growth

Central concern of school reformers in 1830s & 1840s

1.      Using education to create common culture, morality, & political ideology

2.      Protect ideology of American Protestant culture

Threats to this as perceived by Protestant, Ango-American culture

1.      Irish Americans

2.      African Americans

3.      Native Americans

Results

1.      Segregation of Native American & African American students

2.      Establishment of competing parochial school system

3.      The common school was never common to all children

4.      Struggle for cultural dominance continued through end of 20^th century

Native Americans

Desire for N.A. lands

·        Belief that white settlers had the right to Indian lands.

·        It was believed that if N.A.s were isolated and properly educated, their cultural conversion would take place in a generation.

·        Pres. Jackson wanted to open up southern lands to white settlers and the importation of enslaved Africans.

Indian Removal Act of 1830

·        Land was set aside west of the Mississippi for the relocation of Indians in exchange for Indian land east of the Mississippi.

Trail of Tears 1832

·        Choctaw were forced to move from their lands.

·        Many died of cholera, exposure, contaminated food, and exhaustion.

Cherokee Roundup 1838

·        Didn’t leave their lands so U.S. Army burned them out of their houses, ran them down in fields, took children without knowledge of their parents, took cattle and livestock.

Schools

·        Once they were resettled in Indian Territory, the tribes began organizing tribal governments and establishing school systems.

·        The Choctaw nation developed one of the most successful Native American schools.

·        The Cherokee nation did the same.

·        Using bilingual teachers and texts, the Cherokees produced a tribe with almost 100% literacy.

·        Anthropologists have determined that as a result of this school system, the literacy level in English of western Oklahoma Cherokees was higher than the white populations of either Texas or Arkansas.