Course Description
Examination of changing forms, philosophical orientations, and operations of education in the United States from its colonial origins to the present. Includes consideration of both formal and informal education, though the emphasis is on formal institutions. Encompasses education from early childhood through various forms of adult education, and education of majority and minority populations.
Athena Title
History of Education in the US
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
1. Surveying the rang of formal and informal means to gain literacy and other social and economic skills available to learn of all ages in the U.S.; 2. Becoming acquainted with the major educational ideas, movements, practices, and leaders in U.S. education; 3. Evaluating alternative ideas, dissident and unsuccessful movements, alternate practices, and lesser know or silenced leaders in the effort to educate in the U.S.; 4. Examining the political, economic, and social contexts in which formal and informal education grew, withered, or changed; 5. Comparing the educational opportunities afforded groups according to their social class, gender, race and ethnicities; 6. Clarifying the relationship between unequal educations and unequal social power; 7.Examining the impacts of evolving forms of schooling on families, communities, and more informal means of learning; 8. Articulating a historically and ethically grounded vision of contemporary educational possibilities; 9. Extending skills in historical analysis and writing.
Topical Outline
I. Education in Colonial America A. Regional variations in formal and informal systems B. Men, women, Native Americans, and African Americans C. Families, Communities, churches and work-place II. Educational ideas in the age of revolution A. Education in Enlightenment and republican thought B. Change and continuity in Revolutionary and Early National U.S. Education III. Age of the Common School A. Northern and western development 1. From district schools to common schools 2. Urbanization, industrialization, and formal education 3. Spread and decline of academies 4. Changing patterns of adult and informal education 5. Changing patters of women's, Native American, and Black education B. Southern developments 1. Ambivalence toward the common school idea 2. King Cotton, Civil War, Reconstruction, and formal education 3. Spread and decline of academies 4. Adult and informal education 5. Education in the slave quarters, in free black communities, and in freedom 6. Women's education IV. The transformation of the school: Progressive Education, 1890s to 1950s A. Social, political, and economic roots of Progressive education 1. Progressive education and the Progressive movement 2. The meanings of Progressive Education: contradiction and confusion 3. The second industrial revolution B. Expansion of secondary education C. Curricular expansion and differentiation D. Mass culture and education E. Movements: 1. Vocational education 2. Intercultural Education Movement 3. Social Reconstructionism 4. Life Adjustment Education 5. Consolidation 6. Rural Life Education 7. Attack on segregated education 8. Workers' college movement ETC. V. Post-Progressive Education A. Social, political, and economic roots of Post-Progressive education 1. Post-Progressivism and the collapse of corporate liberalism 2. Cold War 3. Third industrial revolution B. Expansion of higher education C. Desegregation and resegregation D. Student movements E. Perpetual crisis, perpetual reform 1. The early attack on Progressive education 2. The romantic reformers 3. Career and other forms of vocational education 4. "A Nation at Risk" 5. The "manufacture crisis" and the internal logic of Post-Progressivism VI. The contemporary scene