The Success Of Education Reform In America
Education is the indication on American culture. At the time of American Revolution, different diversities feuded about the value and potential of having education available to all American citizens. Commissioners displayed countless indicators that Americans were at risk of having poor academic performance, high levels of ill functional literacy, and declining achievement test scores. Leaders claimed that education and literacy encouraged godly living while emphasizing materialistic benefits. Due to the importance of education, the education reform was a success which affected American citizens in a positive way causing a further development in reading and writing.
Horace Mann was the nation’s leading champion of the public school systems that were beginning to emerge in the United States. Mann insisted on having public education, he declared “if we do not prepare children to become good citizens, ...if we do not enrich their minds with knowledge, then our republic must go down to destruction, as others have gone before it”. Mann argued education would help the American government gain stability causing political leaders to side with the education movement. Later he became the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Horace Mann organized teacher-training programs and instituted curriculum reforms. Thomas Jefferson also contributed many thoughts and opinions about education. He believed idiocy and freedom were incompatible in developing education and understanding in the early American republic. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, the nation's third president, scientist, diplomat, and founder of the University of Virginia, contributed several radical notions about education and schooling. Jefferson also supported a state-financed elementary education for white boys and girls to encourage the talented to enroll in state universities.
The Education Reform was opposed by German immigrants that feared younger generations would forget their language and lose grip of their original culture. Germans also established schools for religious instruction and elementary education to prevent the loss of their original cultural ties. Parents of children that attended private schools also opposed the reform. Wealthy citizens saw no reason to pay taxes for public schools if their children were already enrolled in costly private schools or using personal tutors. Catholics also protested against public schools and claimed public schools were Anti-Catholic due to Mann urging teachers to begin the school day without reading comments from the Bible. He wanted schools to strictly support moral education. Catholics believed education and religion were inseparable but Mann seemed to think otherwise. Parents regularly withdrew their children from public school systems and constructed alternative parochial systems due to these controversies.
The success of the education reform triggered social, societal, and economic changes that occurred throughout the nineteenth century which shaped the educational thought. Moral purposes of higher learning remained strong throughout the century. Civic leaders agreed that education and schooling systems heighted responsibilities in the American society. Immigrants produced a greater religious and cultural diversity causing reformers to make a societal change by putting the issues of diversity aside and putting new goals forward into educating the youth and future generations. Modern day classrooms have adopted many unique teaching methods such as field trips, smaller classrooms and group and cooperative learning exercises. By 2000, majority of pupils attending colleges and universities were woman. The education reform has extended schooling beyond high school and has brought promise to different cultures, genders, races, and ethnicities to a greater choice in career and lifestyle.
