CATEGORIES


Education in America: A Look at the History of Education

Eric Wilson - 2012

It is too easy to say schools are not teaching kids how to think anymore. Taking pot shots at the education system has almost become the norm, and solutions are hurled out ranging from common core and comprehensive reform (hearing those words coming from a politician should scare anyone) to school choice or charter schools.
But what is the root cause? Building from the statement “schools are not teaching kids how to think anymore,” though, we can follow three logical steps of progression:
1) Saying “anymore” implies there is a difference in what schools are doing compared to what they once did.
2) If it has indeed changed, we must ask how and when that occurred.
3) Finally, we have to determine what is missing now that would contribute to getting kids thinking again.
In this article, we explore a brief timeline of education in America and consider these three points to raise the possibility that what we are missing in education is
a true liberal arts foundation that once was the bedrock. Education is life, and everything we do and read contributes to that education. We have shifted from this process to trying to teach knowledge. The problems we face are not the buildings or teachers but a lack of the classical education that formed our nation.

1636 – 1890
The first generation of American education began primarily as an extension of the church and was used to train clergy and instill moral teaching. As the nation developed, so did education and in the 1740s to 1760s, we saw the formation of some colonial colleges. For the next 100 years, these founding Ivy League colleges and universities were liberal arts colleges. The use of classical literature was the only method for learning any subject. There was an emphasis on Latin, reading the classics, and self-governing leadership education.
For close to 250 years – while methods changed and structure of the school classroom changed – a liberal arts education was always at the foundation of American schooling. Into the very late 1800s, every college or university was a liberal arts school. While in the early 1800s we introduced degrees such as Divinity, Law, and Medicine, the objective of any graduate was a complete well-rounded education and a self-governing, self-thinking society. The cultural outcome was consistent with high levels of morality and virtue as the lessons of the classics and the study of core religious texts permeated the curriculum.
1890 - 1930
At the start of the twentieth century, a movement began that believed a comprehensive, centrally-controlled, and bureaucratic public education system was needed.
The progressive objective sought to replace the previous century’s educational system with a more standardized, “predictable” approach. At the same time, conservative large corporations and business leaders began to see the liberal arts and education as a liability to a well-trained “factory type” workforce. American manufacturers – together with the growing labor movement – pressed Congress to dramatically expand federal oversight of education – especially for vocational instruction.
Additionally at this time – and perhaps the most important – was the transformation from self-governing leadership education to national citizen education. This point in American history was a time of tremendous immigration, and as more and more immigrants arrived in America, politicians foresaw the potential dangers of Balkanization.
The combination of these three factors with the administration at that time drove the public education system – once designed primarily to impart thinking skills and knowledge – to take on a far more political and social role.
1930 – 2012
As result of the Second World War and displacement of teachers and families, around 1945 accrediting agencies enforced the standardization of the curriculum, and many schools became interchangeable. They began to introduce standardized tests and university entrance exams became more popular.
From 1945 to 1980, the first two years of classical liberal arts education were gradually dropped in favor of a full four years of job training with only shallow general education courses, and graduate degrees proliferated.
In 1980, the United States Department of Education was created with its mission to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. The immediate result was additional bureaucracy and a loss of control by the individual states of their respective educational decisions.
Over the past 80 years, government has tinkered, messed with, and manipulated the public school system – all the while creating more centralized control, becoming more specialized and skill-focused, and building a “conveyor belt” system that produced mind-numb robots. In just eight decades – while public school enrollment has steadily increased – the number of school districts has declined from about 127,000 to 16,000. In 1986 (the year of the “great commission in education”) only 6% of 11th grade students could solve multi-step math problems.
Some of the worst “improvements” to the education process came under the misguided banner of reforms. The final nail in the critical thinking and leadership education coffin came with the “No Child Left Behind Policy” in 2001. Its stated purposes included increased accountability for states, schools, and school districts; greater choice for parents and students; more flexibility for states and local educational agencies (LEAs) in the use of federal education dollars; and a stronger emphasis on reading. But the truth is it created a standardized process to test recall and forced education to go even further away from learning. The pressure placed on both teachers and students to meet the standards imposed by No Child Left Behind created an environment in the classroom that forced teachers (or made it easier) to begin "teaching to the test” rather than focusing on fostering critical thinking skills.
For American public education, this was the final blow to what Thomas Jefferson once envisioned for the school system. With the new “reforms” in place, teachers focus all efforts toward standardized test subject matter and classrooms are filled with relentless drilling. This is not something that inspires able people to become teachers or makes children eager to learn. Worse yet, it holds good students hostage to the performance of the least talented, and those eager children that entered school wanting to learn are being relentlessly pounded into the submission of mediocrity.
Ultimately, the result of such education is reduced national innovation, initiative, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism – the very skills and habits which made America the world’s economic leader and which are needed to keep the American economy on track (or get it back there).
In contrast to the America of 100 years ago, we now have a population of dependents – people who look to experts for almost everything and citizens who (in spite of great talent and capacity) are accustomed to being told what to do, even in the most basic aspects of their lives.
The solution is not more money, more training, more tests, or definitely not more regulations and controls. Teachers left to their own abilities will teach and inspire. We need to free the education system and free the minds of the students. We must again begin to “teach to learn” instead of “lecturing to recite.” For a 250-year span that brought innovation and enlightenment, our foundation was a classical liberal arts education. Critical Thinking and Liberal Arts have been systematically pushed out the classroom. For society to succeed and minds to grow, we must not just bring them back, but make them the staple of our education system again.