CONNECTING TO THE CLASSROOM
This chapter has provided you with some basic information about how schools and the education of different students have evolved to the schools we know today. Below are some key principles for applying the information in this chapter to the classroom.
1. The history of education helps us understand teaching practices that have been tried previously by educators, the reasons for their falling out of favor, and the possibility of their recycling again as desirable practice.
2. Teachers in primary, middle, and high schools are expected to provide age-appropriate education for students based on research on child and adolescent development.
3. Good teachers are able to analyze and evaluate the different curriculum packages their school districts are likely to impose on them during their careers and make wise, pedagogically sound decisions about their use in their classrooms.
4. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was the foundation for ensuring that an equal education could finally be accessible to all children regardless of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language, gender, and abilities.
5. Expectations for the high academic achievement of teachers continues to rise in these times of accountability.
SUMMARY
This chapter reviewed key developments over the past four centuries that established public schools and influenced the schools you know today. The following five major topics were discussed:
· Establishment of public schools in the United States. The Constitution gave the responsibility for education to states, which were expected to provide schools for their children.
· Schools designed by students’ age. As scholars learned more about child and adolescent development, schools were divided into grade levels to meet the needs of early childhood, elementary, middle level, and high school students.
· Historical influences on the school curriculum. The curriculum has been influenced by strong religious and nationalistic themes, the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the progressive movement in the early 1900s, and the launching of the first satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957.
· Education and equality. When students of color began attending school, they were enrolled in segregated schools, which did not change until schools were desegregated in the 1960s.
· The evolution of teaching. The preparation of teachers has evolved from the requirement for completion of elementary school in colonial days to a college degree today.