120 Years of American Education
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 124 pages
File Size : 33,86 MB
Release : 1993
Category : Education
ISBN :
Testing Wars in the Public Schools
Author : William J. Reese
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 28,15 MB
Release : 2013-03-11
Category : Education
ISBN : 0674075692
Book Description
Written tests to evaluate students were a radical and controversial innovation when American educators began adopting them in the 1800s. Testing quickly became a key factor in the political battles during this period that gave birth to America's modern public school system. William J. Reese offers a richly detailed history of an educational revolution that has so far been only partially told. Single-classroom schools were the norm throughout the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century. Pupils demonstrated their knowledge by rote recitation of lessons and were often assessed according to criteria of behavior and discipline having little to do with academics. Convinced of the inadequacy of this system, the reformer Horace Mann and allies on the Boston School Committee crafted America's first major written exam and administered it as a surprise in local schools in 1845. The embarrassingly poor results became front-page news and led to the first serious consideration of tests as a useful pedagogic tool and objective measure of student achievement. A generation after Mann's experiment, testing had become widespread. Despite critics' ongoing claims that exams narrowed the curriculum, ruined children's health, and turned teachers into automatons, once tests took root in American schools their legitimacy was never seriously challenged. Testing Wars in the Public Schools puts contemporary battles over scholastic standards and benchmarks into perspective by showcasing the historic successes and limitations of the pencil-and-paper exam.
Teaching What Really Happened
Author : James W. Loewen
Publisher : Teachers College Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 30,33 MB
Release : 2018-09-07
Category : Education
ISBN : 0807759481
Book Description
“Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”— Howard Zinn James Loewen has revised Teaching What Really Happened, the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled "Truth" that addresses how traditional and social media can distort current events and the historical record. Helping students understand what really happened in the past will empower them to use history as a tool to argue for better policies in the present. Our society needs engaged citizens now more than ever, and this book offers teachers concrete ideas for getting students excited about history while also teaching them to read critically. It will specifically help teachers and students tackle important content areas, including Eurocentrism, the American Indian experience, and slavery. Book Features: An up-to-date assessment of the potential and pitfalls of U.S. and world history education. Information to help teachers expect, and get, good performance from students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Strategies for incorporating project-oriented self-learning, having students conduct online historical research, and teaching historiography. Ideas from teachers across the country who are empowering students by teaching what really happened. Specific chapters dedicated to five content topics usually taught poorly in today’s schools.
23 Myths About the History of American Schools
Author : Sherman Dorn
Publisher : Teachers College Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 42,78 MB
Release : 2024
Category : Education
ISBN : 0807782173
Book Description
In this fascinating collection, some of the foremost historians of education—including Barbara Beatty, Larry Cuban, Linda Eisenmann, Yoon Pak, John Rury, and Jonathan Zimmerman—debunk commonly held myths about American schooling. Each short, readable chapter focuses on one myth, explaining what the real history is and how it helped shape education today. Contributors take on a host of tall tales, including the supposed agrarian origins of summer vacation; exaggerated stories of declining student behavior and academic performance; persistent claims that some people are born to be teachers; idealistic notions that the 1954 Brown decision ended segregation in American schools; misleading beliefs that classrooms operate in ways designed to fit the industrial era; and more. 23 Myths About the History of American Schools will awaken the inner history nerd of everyone who ever asked, “How did we get this crazy school system?” It will affirm the truth that its readers are as entitled to think critically about schooling as anyone else. Contributors include Barbara Beatty, Larry Cuban, Linda Eisenmann, Yoon Pak, John Rury, and Jonathan Zimmerman.
Self-Taught
Author : Heather Andrea Williams
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 48,60 MB
Release : 2009-11-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0807888974
Book Description
In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.
The Freedom Schools
Author : Jon N. Hale
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 17,17 MB
Release : 2016-06-07
Category : History
ISBN : 0231541821
Book Description
Created in 1964 as part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Schools were launched by educators and activists to provide an alternative education for African American students that would facilitate student activism and participatory democracy. The schools, as Jon N. Hale demonstrates, had a crucial role in the civil rights movement and a major impact on the development of progressive education throughout the nation. Designed and run by African American and white educators and activists, the Freedom Schools counteracted segregationist policies that inhibited opportunities for black youth. Providing high-quality, progressive education that addressed issues of social justice, the schools prepared African American students to fight for freedom on all fronts. Forming a political network, the Freedom Schools taught students how, when, and where to engage politically, shaping activists who trained others to challenge inequality. Based on dozens of first-time interviews with former Freedom School students and teachers and on rich archival materials, this remarkable social history of the Mississippi Freedom Schools is told from the perspective of those frequently left out of civil rights narratives that focus on national leadership or college protestors. Hale reveals the role that school-age students played in the civil rights movement and the crucial contribution made by grassroots activists on the local level. He also examines the challenges confronted by Freedom School activists and teachers, such as intimidation by racist Mississippians and race relations between blacks and whites within the schools. In tracing the stories of Freedom School students into adulthood, this book reveals the ways in which these individuals turned training into decades of activism. Former students and teachers speak eloquently about the principles that informed their practice and the influence that the Freedom School curriculum has had on education. They also offer key strategies for further integrating the American school system and politically engaging today's youth.
Finding Your Element
Author : Sir Ken Robinson, PhD
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 24,50 MB
Release : 2014-05-27
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 0143125516
Book Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Element gives readers an inspirational and practical guide to self-improvement, happiness, creativity, and personal transformation. You, Your Child, and School is forthcoming from Viking. Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk video and groundbreaking book, The Element, introduced readers to a new concept of self-fulfillment through the convergence of natural talents and personal passions. The Element has inspired readers all over the world and has created for Robinson an intensely devoted following. Now comes the long-awaited companion, the practical guide that helps people find their own Element. Among the questions that this new book answers are: • How do I find out what my talents and passions are? • What if I love something I’m not good at? • What if I’m good at something I don’t love? • What if I can’t make a living from my Element? • How do I do help my children find their Element? Finding Your Element comes at a critical time as concerns about the economy, education and the environment continue to grow. The need to connect to our personal talents and passions has never been greater. As Robinson writes in his introduction, wherever you are, whatever you do, and no matter how old you are, if you’re searching for your Element, this book is for you.
Anyone Can Homeschool
Author : Nicki Truesdell
Publisher :
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 41,44 MB
Release : 2020-08-21
Category :
ISBN :
Book Description
How to educate your children at home even under the most impossible circumstances. Moms and dads, you have all that it takes to educate your children, whether your circumstances are ideal or not. Nicki Truesdell, blogger, mother of 5, and second-generation homeschooler, shares her stories of home education through many ups and downs, and how she learned to adapt to every situation.In this book you will hear from real people who are doing it, even in the most difficult of circumstances: single parents, grandparents, families with chronic illness, children with special needs, working parents, and many other situations.This book is the product of many discussions, both in real life and online, where frustrated and desperate parents expressed a desire to find an alternative to the public schools. Like so many, they automatically assumed that homeschooling was only for those families who had neatly organized lives, complete with a large income, a school room in their house, a college degree, and obedient children. A must-read for every parent who is desperate for an education solution.
The Education Trap
Author : Cristina Viviana Groeger
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 12,38 MB
Release : 2021-03-09
Category : Education
ISBN : 0674259157
Book Description
Why—contrary to much expert and popular opinion—more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger’s test case is the city of Boston, which spent heavily on public schools. She examines how workplaces came to depend on an army of white-collar staff, largely women and second-generation immigrants, trained in secondary schools. But Groeger finds that the shift to more educated labor had negative consequences—both intended and unintended—for many workers. Employers supported training in schools in order to undermine the influence of craft unions, and so shift workplace power toward management. And advanced educational credentials became a means of controlling access to high-paying professional and business jobs, concentrating power and wealth. Formal education thus became a central force in maintaining inequality. The idea that more education should be the primary means of reducing inequality may be appealing to politicians and voters, but Groeger warns that it may be a dangerous policy trap. If we want a more equitable society, we should not just prescribe more time in the classroom, but fight for justice in the workplace.
Learning History in America
Author : Lloyd S. Kramer
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 12,78 MB
Release : 1994-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780816623648
Book Description
The essays in this book, like all other texts, have been written in a historical context that shapes both the themes and the prose styles of the authors. A close reading of these texts would in fact lead to many overlapping contexts of politics, social hierarchies, modern communications, and international relations, but we want to focus briefly on two contextual influences that carry the most obvious connections to this book: the wide-ranging public debate about the proper curriculum for American schools and universities, and the more specific debate among historians about new trends in historical scholarship.
