HOW HAS TEACHING EVOLVED?
Asked about the teaching profession itself, Mr. Kuhn, who has served on negotiating teams for the teachers’ union, indicated that “teachers are generally highly respected in my community. You have to earn their respect. Once you have gained that respect, students and the parents will respect you.”
The role of women in teaching defines the profession. Because of their traditional roles as nurturing mothers, women have been seen as the natural teachers of children. Historically, they have provided a stable, inexpensive, moral teaching force for the country. Women have not always been the majority of teachers. During the colonial period, teachers were men except in the dame schools. After the Revolutionary War, females began to be recruited as teachers. Teachers today are even more likely to be women than in the 19th century, which may contribute to the lower status attributed to teaching.
The emerging pattern in the 19th century was men administrators managing women teachers. The leadership of the NEA was male school administrators, college presidents, and professors throughout most of its first 100 years. Women teachers had to seek permission from the male leadership to speak at the business meetings of the annual conference. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), on the other hand, evolved from the Chicago Federation of Teachers, where two activist women teachers—Margaret Haley and Catherine Goggin—joined forces with organized labor because they felt they shared the same interests as workers (Spring, 2011).
Although teachers are held responsible for preparing students to meet national standards, they have not always been represented in the groups developing those standards. The expertise and knowledge of teachers are not yet valued by the policy-makers, business leaders, and think tanks as reflected by their limited involvement on many national and state committees on education reform. The Center for Teaching Quality asserts that “teachers must be seen as solutions, not problems” to raise student achievement and serve students effectively (Berry, 2011, p. 20).
Teacher Preparation
To ensure that teachers taught the curriculum that educational leaders desired, teacher education programs were developed. Reverend Samuel Hall is credited with establishing one of the first institutions for preparing teachers in 1823 in Concord, Vermont, but Emma Willard had opened the Troy Female Seminary in 1821, in which women earned their certification, which many school boards required. However, certified teachers were not readily available in many rural areas for another century (Spring, 2011).
Women teachers in the 19th century were expected to be single and follow strict codes of behavior set by local school boards.
Normal schools were established in 1839 in Lexington, Massachusetts, to prepare teachers for elementary schools. Most students in normal schools were women who had completed elementary or common schools, but had not completed high school. Curriculum in the normal schools required one to two years of study in which the elementary school curriculum was reviewed, classroom management studied, and teaching methods taught. Many of today’s state colleges and universities began as normal schools. They changed their names and expanded their missions beyond the preparation of teachers in the mid-1900s. Today, they continue to prepare the majority of teachers in the country.
Teachers of children in the 1700s had not always finished elementary school although teachers of adolescents may have attended college. The amount of education increased in each century that followed. In the 1800s, a growing number of elementary school teachers completed high school and began to attend teacher institutes and normal schools to further develop their knowledge of the subjects they were teaching as well as their teaching skills. It was not until the mid-1900s that most teachers completed a four-year college, which is now required for a teaching license. Into the mid-1900s teachers had more education than most members of their community. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, a larger proportion of the population had a bachelor’s degree than in previous centuries.
Teacher Behavior
Teachers have long been under the control of school boards and administrators. Not only did administrators oversee the work of teachers and select their textbooks; they also monitored their personal behavior. Teachers were expected to live exemplary moral lives. Their social activities were monitored by school officials throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. Horace Mann in 1840 indicated that a teacher should have “perfect” knowledge of the subject being taught, an aptitude for teaching, which he believed could be learned, the ability to manage and govern a classroom and mold moral behavior, good behavior as a model for students, and good morals (Spring, 2011).
Even though morals were only one of Horace Mann’s five qualifications, it appeared to be one of the most important to school superintendents and school board members. Contracts for women teachers did not allow them to socialize with men or be married. The emphasis on high moral character continued into the 20th century as teachers were warned that they should be very careful about their dress and behavior. Although moral character is not included in today’s teacher contracts, teachers are still expected by the public to be models of high moral character.
Teachers’ Lounge
One-Room School
This story was told to Dr. Sturgeon in 2003. The information was gathered as part of an undertaking to document the teaching experiences of 1930s and 1940s one-room school teachers in Mason County, West Virginia.
OK, I’ll tell you about fun things in the one-room school. The children liked it when we played “button, button, who has the button” because they always seemed so excited. They also looked forward to playing “I Spy.” When we played “I Spy” you would hide these scissors so that maybe only the tip end would stick out. Then they would have to hide their eyes; all but the one that was hiding the scissors was up and around. He would walk around and around inside the school and then after he had hidden the scissors somewhere he would pretend he was putting them in other places so that they wouldn’t know just where you were. So, OK they are hidden and the kids get up out of their seats and then the teacher would say “Wayne, you’re getting hot, you’re getting hot.” The closer you got to it, the hotter you’d get. Or, “Oh, Thelma, you’re cold, you’re just so cold it’s a wonder you wouldn’t be freezing,” you know, stuff like that. Anyway, then whoever found it got to hide it then from the rest of them. Then, “Button, Button, Who Has the Button?” you’d seat them all; you had these front seats, you know, where the kids came up to recite, and so there would be a long row of just people sitting and they would have to hold their hand. Then you had a button, and it would slide through their hands. Only one person got the button up there. So you had to make, pretend like you were dropping it when you weren’t so that when you got through then finally you’d open your hand and show it to someone else. Then the teacher would say, “OK, button, button, who has the button?” Then she’d say, “Carla May has it.” Then she’d say, “No I don’t.” “Fred. Fred has it.” “Nope.” So finally they’d get it and whoever had it last, they got to be the button hider. They were fun, because we didn’t have any toys or playground equipment or computer games, you know. We were all together in the school, in one room. We had a baseball bat and softball. And that’s about all we had. A lot different from today. But I loved every day. That school was the center of those little communities.
Dr. Douglas Sturgeon Shawnee State University Portsmouth, Ohio
Challenging Assumptions
Are college students preparing to be teachers as academically strong as college students preparing for other jobs?
The Assumption
Some teacher candidates are not as academically talented as other college students, contributing to the lower than expected academic performance of PreK–12 students.