Nineteenth Century American Education is often referred to as “The Common School Period.”  It was during this century that education went from being completely private to being available to the common masses.

The Common School movement

…not until the 1840s did an organized system exist. Education reformers like Horace Mann and Henry Barnard, working in Massachusetts and Connecticut respectively, helped create statewide common-school systems. These reformers sought to increase opportunities for all children and create common bonds among an increasingly diverse population. They also argued education could preserve social stability and prevent crime and poverty.

Common-school advocates worked to establish a free elementary education accessible to everyone and financed by public funds. As such, they advocated public schools should be accountable to local school boards and state governments. They also helped establish compulsory school attendance laws for elementary-age children. By 1918, such laws existed in all states.

Public High Schools

Public High Schools were developed in the early 1800′s as a public education alternative to the private academies of the 18th Century.  The schools focused on a practical curriculum with college preparatory classes.

Comprehensive High Schools

As democratic equality and social efficiency opened access to education for larger groups of people, upper middle-class parents sought to maintain prestige in the credentials their children were attaining …. the compromise was the comprehensive high school with its vocational and academic tracks.

The educational system in the United States has seen many changes over the past 250 years.  In order to demonstrate to you how far we have come in education, we will embark on a trip which will take us across all barriers of time and space, race and wealth, age and gender.  Leave your computer behind as we travel back throughout America’s history to witness the evolution of the American Education System.

Many parents taught their children to read and write at home using a bible and a hornbook.  A hornbook was a wooden board with a handle. A lesson sheet of the ABCs in small and capital letters, some series of syllables and often, the Lord’s Prayer, was attached to the board and was protected by a thin layer of cow’s horn.  Some hornbooks of wealthy families were very fancy, decorated with jewels and leather and included ivory pointers.  Most of them were plain and had a string around the handle to be worn around the neck.

People who wrote the early primers and readers used pictures of animals learning to read and write to show that reading and writing were natural and fairly  easy processes! By the 1750s, literacy rates (percentage of people who could basically read and write) were the highest in the New England colonies, at about 75% for males and 65% for females.  The literacy rates, however, were  lower in the the Middle and Southern colonies.

Children wrote using a quill dipped in ink, which sometimes blotted on the page, so they sprinkled on pounce. Pounce is a powder-like sand that helps not blotch the page.

Most children wrote in a copybook because paper was so expensive. Wealthy children had a tutor (always a man) teach them privately. Some boys went to grammar school and sometimes even college but never girls. Girls were given lessons on how to run a home. It wasn’t even expected for girls to spend any of their time reading! Instead their mothers taught them how to cook, sew, preserve food, direct servants and serve an elegant meal. Some girls were sent to teachers to learn how to sing, play a musical instrument, sew fancy stitchery, to serve tea properly by learning manners and how to carry on a polite conversation. When boys grew older, they could become apprentices to learning to become shopkeepers or craftsmen by working with and watching an adult.  Education was becoming more secular in order to produce socially responsible citizens.

English Grammar Schools

English Grammar Schools were born as the growth of middle-class businesses in the 1700s led to the demand for a secondary education that would provide practical instruction in many subjects, from navigation and engineering to bookkeeping and foreign languages.  Students needed more than elementary instruction; but were not interested in preparing for college.  Commercial subjects were emphasized over religious ones.  Some other subjects such as music, art and dancing were also taught as means to train students for socializing in polite company.  These schools were the first secondary institutions to accept female students.  Girls who lived in the Middle Colonies had greater educational opportunity than girls who lived elsewhere because of the larger number of schools there.  Quakers and Christian leaders such as William Penn and Anthony Benezet, were concerned with and supported the education of several deprived groups such as women as well as African-Americans and Native Americans.

Later in the 1700s, English Grammar Schools became more flexible in allowing women to attend.  They were taught the 3 Rs (Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmetic), as well as dancing, French, and Training on being a Lady.

Academies

The Academy was a new type of secondary school that grew up during the second half of the eighteenth century.  It was basically an attempt to combine Latin and English grammar schools through separate Latin and English departments within one school.  These schools were private, and women were allowed to attend.  Academies were unlike the Latin grammar schools in  that the primary language was English.  Also, classical subjects were included in the curriculum, unlike the English grammar schools.  Later on, the academy became the most popular type of secondary school.

Native American Education

The formal education of NativeAmericans was left up to missionaries, most notably within the Choctaw, Cherokee, and Chickasaw tribes. The aim of these institutions was to “de-indianize” the children and begin the road towards assimilation into European-American society. The missionaries worked primarily to inculcate Christian religion and morals in the students, which was also viewed as a necessary step in the assimilation process.  Native Americans were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and English.

By Tara Parker-Pope

Source: The New York Times

Parents and teachers often tell children to pay attention — to be a “good listener.” But what if your child’s brain doesn’t know how to listen?

That’s the challenge for children with auditory processing disorder, a poorly understood syndrome that interferes with the brain’s ability to recognize and interpret sounds. It’s been estimated that 2 to 5 percent of children have the disorder, said Gail D. Chermak, an expert on speech and hearing sciences at Washington State University, and it’s likely that many cases have gone undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.

The symptoms of A.P.D. — trouble paying attention and following directions, low academic performance, behavior problems and poor reading and vocabulary — are often mistaken for attention problems or even autism.

But now the disorder is getting some overdue attention, thanks in part to the talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell and her 10-year-old son, Blake, who has A.P.D.

In the foreword to a new book, “The Sound of Hope” (Ballantine) — by Lois Kam Heymann, the speech pathologist and auditory therapist who helped Blake — Ms. O’Donnell recounts how she learned something was amiss.

It began with a haircut before her son started first grade. Blake had already been working with a speech therapist on his vague responses and other difficulties, so when he asked for a “little haircut” and she pressed him on his meaning, she told the barber he wanted short hair like his brother’s. But in the car later, Blake erupted in tears, and Ms. O’Donnell realized her mistake. By “little haircut,” Blake meant little hair should be cut. He wanted a trim.

“I pulled off on the freeway and hugged him,” Ms. O’Donnell said. “I said: ‘Blakey, I’m really sorry. I didn’t understand you. I’ll do better.’ ”

That was a turning point. Ms. O’Donnell’s quest to do better led her to Ms. Heymann, who determined that while Blake could hear perfectly well, he had trouble distinguishing between sounds. To him, words like “tangerine” and “tambourine,” “bed” and “dead,” may sound the same.

“The child hears ‘And the girl went to dead,’ and they know it doesn’t make sense,” Ms. Heymann told me. “But while they try to figure it out, the teacher continues talking and now they’re behind. Those sounds are being distorted or misinterpreted, and it affects how the child is going to learn speech and language.”

Blake’s brain struggled to retain the words he heard, resulting in a limited vocabulary and trouble with reading and spelling. Abstract language, metaphors like “cover third base,” even “knock-knock” jokes, were confusing and frustrating.

Children with auditory processing problems often can’t filter out other sounds. The teacher’s voice, a chair scraping the floor and crinkling paper are all heard at the same level. “The normal reaction by the parent is ‘Why don’t you listen?’ ” Ms. Heymann said. “They were listening, but they weren’t hearing the right thing.”

The solution is often a comprehensive approach, at school and at home. To dampen unwanted noise, strips of felt or tennis balls may be placed on the legs of chairs and desks. Parents work to simplify language and avoid metaphors and abstract references.

The O’Donnell household cut back on large, noisy gatherings that were upsetting to Blake. Twice-weekly sessions focusing on sounds and words, using rhyme and body gestures, helped him catch up on the learning he had missed.

Help inside the classroom is essential. One family in Westchester County, who asked not to be named to protect their son’s privacy, met with his teachers and agreed on an array of adaptations — including having his teacher wear a small microphone that directed her voice more clearly to a speaker on the student’s desk so he could better distinguish her voice from competing sounds.

Nobody knows exactly why auditory processing skills don’t fully develop in every child, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Scientists are conducting brain-imaging studies to better understand the neural basis of the condition and find out if there are different forms.

Reassuringly, the disorder seems to have little or nothing to do with intelligence. Blake has an encyclopedic knowledge of animals — he once corrected his mother for referring to a puma as a mountain lion. The Westchester child is now a 17-year-old high school student being recruited by top colleges.

“He’s in accelerated Latin, honors science classes,” said his mother. “I remember I used to dream of the day he would be able to wake up in the morning and just say, ‘Mommy.’ ”

Not every child does so well, and some children with A.P.D. have other developmental and social problems. But Ms. O’Donnell says that treatment is not just about better grades.

“It definitely affected his whole world,” she said of her son. “Not just learning. It cuts them off from society, from interactions. To see the difference in who he is today versus who he was two years ago, and then to contemplate what would have happened had we not been able to catch it — I think he would have been lost.”

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