Talk:History of education in the United States

message: The article has a nice bibliography. Next it needs an outline, then--finally--some text. I'll try working on it.Rjensen 04:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added some information from Education in the United States that should be here, but it may need some major cleanup. --Zenosaga 16:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  A big section of this article has just been copy pasted, i.e at least the first paragraph. Did not check the rest. AleutianTea (talk) 17:49, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Improvement

message: It seems the bulk of this article is not about the "history" of U.S. education so much as it is about the current state of education in the U.S. under NCLB. 
I know there are only so many hours in a day, and I'm not volunteering to clean things up because I'm not qualified to do so. I found this article because I was looking for information. 
To whom it may concern, I found an informative article that might be of some use in that the author has done what someone seems to be attempting to do here, condensing a broad spectrum of facts, but does so without sacrificing cohesion. The article flows like a story and is thus a pleasant read without being light on substance. I have not checked the sources for accuracy, but if the article is accurate, it might be a useful source of inspiration for anyone wishing to breathe some life into the "history" section of this history article.
It also provides some perspective on the so-called struggle over separation of church and state as it has been played out in the field of education, demonstrating that this was a source of friction from the very beginning. 
I hate to be a back-seat driver, but here's the article, if anyone's interested. 
http://www.servintfree.net/~aidmn-ejournal/publications/2001-11/PublicEducationInTheUnitedStates.html
 
Here's my four tildes: 220.45.182.173 01:18, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there is a reference to the Prussian model under "Mann reforms." Student7 (talk) 21:18, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  History? 

message: Greetings, there's no mention about Thomas Jefferson in the article and how he helped start and funded the public education throughout the country and helped build the University of Virginia. He thought that public education should be a universal right to everyone no matter what class not a privelage to the wealthy elite. He thought it was important in order for the country to succeed. Otherwise it would have been a backwater country full of mostly low educated ignorants like in the Dark Ages or Medieval Times. The main reason Thomas Jefferson became bankrupt is because of funding support for Public Education and founding the University of Virginia. I saw all of this in the TV show History Detectives who found a document signed by Thomas Jefferson concerning public education. I don't think I'm a good wiki writer but for the people who regularly maintains this article should make a mention about him.--Pilot expert 08:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thomas Jefferson 

message: Some content is duplicated at the above page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.246.0.173 (talk) 10:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States:_Bibliography 

message: This needs to be supported by sources. There was more than one reason why Catholic immigrants wanted their children educated in Catholic schools - they were trying to preserve religion, which is somewhat different than "resisting assimilation".  Also, in many areas, Irish, the first major group of Catholic immigrants, were subject to much hostility.  They set up the first Catholic schools and universities, and dominated the Catholic Church in America for decades.--Parkwells (talk) 20:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Claims about Catholic parochial education

message: There were documented differences between the New England colonies and Chesapeake Bay colonies in their approaches to education before the Revolution, and between the regions in the 19th century, which should be more recognized by this article. Public education was much more widespread in the North and support for education and literacy was part of the culture.--Parkwells (talk) 22:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Differences between colonies and regions

message: I found the above article in the list of those to be wikified. It seems to have some material that might fit in here. It's entirely about the USA. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:04, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge of [[Women in education]] 

message: There are wide swaths of comments without any in-line footnotes. While the material doesn't look bad, it doesn't always convey credibility either. Student7 (talk) 18:45, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnotes

message: The third citation does not support the article's claim that there was 97% literacy in 1840.  The source material gives the ratio for the number of illiterate persons that are white, male and above the age of 20 to the white population at large (yes, including women, children, etc) as 1:25.27.  This is not a proper literacy rate!  Nor is it a rate of 97% even, as that would mean rounding up from 96.04%.  If you look at the data earlier in the very same census, there were 549,905 illiterates above the age of twenty in 1840 and the number of whites aged twenty and above (so, including individuals aged 20 who were not considered in the illiterates number) was only 6,439,699 in 1840 which yields and illiteracy rate of over 8.539%, or a literacy rate of only 91.461%, even when including an deflated overall population compared to the number of illiterates.  Another problem with this source is that the census bureau did no actual literacy testing; it was by survey only, and only the male head of household was asked.  I think the claim of 97% literacy in 1840 should be removed.71.206.160.198 (talk) 17:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe this should be under "reporting literacy," or "coming to grips with illiteracy." Removing the best source of information about literacy in 1840 should not be done light-heartedly. Yes, this is a "report." So is reporting the color on one's skin in the 2000 census. Does that make it doubtful? Rejecting this source should be a matter of using a WP:RELY source. IMO, literacy was not that wide among white southerners. But there was high literacy in New England. Elementary schools all over the place since day 1. Student7 (talk) 19:42, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is not just that the report gives only self-reported data, which, if the source is to be used, needs to be at least noted.  The information that was presented was not even supported by the cited source.  The data that was being used was the ratio of illiterate white males over the age of twenty to the general population.  This does not support a literacy rate of 97% among whites.  This is simply an example of the overextension of a source.  The source need not be eliminated, but it can't support the myth of near-universal literacy in a time when literacy was a major problem.  There are other, more pertinent sources that can show such trends.  Here is a secondary source that gives a better characterization of illiteracy going back to 1870.  http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy GwydionMapDon (talk) 19:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: historians have long ago agreed that census questions that asked people about their literacy is an accurate way to get the information. Researchers matched the census reports with signatures on wills and got very high correlations. Historian Harvey Graff --a leading expert--says "Contemporary literacy research in several countries has established a high level of accuracy in census self-reports." Graff, "What the 1861 Census Can Tell Us about Literacy: a Reply," Histoire Sociale: Social History; 1975 8(16): 337-349. Rjensen (talk) 21:26, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: First, this is not an issue of the accuracy of the source so much as it is that the source was misquoted.  It does not contain a proper national literacy rate.  If you actually look at the source, you will see as much.  The number that was used was not a literacy rate.  It was a ratio of the total white population of all ages and either gender, to the number of white males over the age of twenty that were illiterate.  As to the accuracy of the census or general information on literacy levels of the period, refer here: http://books.google.com/books?id=dTvOcQGkOIwC&pg=PP1&dq=Education+of+the+American+population+By+John+K.+Folger,+Charles+B.+Nam#  Scroll down and click on the beginning of chapter four (page 111) for the relevant sections.  Clearly, the article would not be well served if it is made to continue to state that literacy was near-universal in 1840.GwydionMapDon (talk) 03:40, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem with literacy rate for 1840 and citation given

message: Education today is nothing like education in the 18th and 19th century. A history really should cover major changes. Corporal punishment is one of those major changes. Given liberally at will in the 19th and pretty much phased out in the second half of the twentieth. It is frivolous to skip it IMO. Student7 (talk) 21:29, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Corporal punishment

message: There was a disparity between eduction in New England and nearly everywhere else. It is no coincidence that 18th (and early 19th) century writers are mostly from New England and nearby. Seldom from the South. The material on Georgia seems to suggest similar attention to education, as they had in the north. This statistic seems like an anomaly to me. I would suggest dropping it or giving information on education in the south in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which has to be wanting, when compared to other sections of the country. Student7 (talk) 19:35, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: The south

message: Attempting to clean up this article.  In reading over the past discussions, I'm wondering why the Bibliography section is still here?  A separate article with essentially the same content has already been created (and updated by other editors).  Although there are some good external links buried in it, this list shouldn't go at the bottom of this article, since it does not consist entirely of external links.  If someone wants to salvage any of those links, then delete the Bibliography section, go ahead. MusicTree3 (talk) 18:37, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: keep both.  They serve different purposes and different audiences. Readers of this basic survey article need a short basic guide to the vast literature; readers interested in more specific issues need the longer separate version. Rjensen (talk) 06:56, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay by me.  Sounds good.  I noticed this article was started in 2007 with this core bibliography.  By the way, I'm a college student studying the foundations of education. MusicTree3 (talk) 07:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I erased it based on the first comment. Didn't see replies until just now. Be advised that readers tune out after a few articles. If they are serious researchers, not sure why they would be here. A "casual" researcher is looking for a much shorter, pithier list. Same with externals or anything else at the bottom. Or any other list, for that matter. Length is a detriment. Student7 (talk) 19:37, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the compromise is to have a Further Reading section which I added. People's eyes  blur? sounds like OR. :)  Rjensen (talk) 04:54, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Long lists are not "reader friendly." It is not in the text, so the remark does not qualify for WP:OR consideration. User friendliness was a topic I studied in graduate school and was used successfully in a corporation I worked for. I found these concepts echoed in Wikipedia policy. Long lists are distracting. See, for example, WP:NOTMIRROR and WP:NOTCATALOG both echoing the same principle of sharing "too much" information.Student7 (talk) 20:51, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not a long list compared to the tens of thousands of scholarly books and articles out there on the topic. Wiki is a good place for students to find termpaper topics, which (for most professors) must be based on published sources. Since we have LOTS of readers for this article (5000 page views a month) we have to serve a diversity of interests. Student7 says he has in mind the corporation he once worked for--but perhaps it would be more useful to think of university students as our target audience.Rjensen (talk) 01:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: We are obliged to follow policy here. Policy is not made at the project level for the reason that there are too few people participating. You have not answered the Wikipedia policy concerns mentioned above. Student7 (talk) 19:55, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: . The great majority of long history articles in Wiki have bibliographies or further reading sections. to quote WP:FURTHERREADING: "A bulleted list, usually alphabetized, of a reasonable number of editor-recommended publications that do not appear elsewhere in the article and were not used to verify article content. Editors may include brief annotations."  Rjensen (talk) 20:35, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

text: Another problem that occurs frequently, and the longer lists are more vulnerable, is how to evaluate supposed "important" further reading. Is is just some guy who wants his book on there for WP:SPAM purposes? Or is it really important. When the list gets truly cluttered as this one has, I just skip new entries figuring somebody will come along someday, erase the whole thing anyway. The only hope for the subsection. No way to verify any entry and new entries are screened less the more entries there are. Student7 (talk) 15:36, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delete Bibliography Section 

message: The history lightly touches upon the transition from local schools to state mandated standards. What happened was this: in the 19th century the states required public schooling. "Standards", if any, were poorly enforced. The states weren't giving any money locally so poorer areas has poorer schools. The state recognized this and didn't really expect much from (say) a rural school.
This changed in the 20th century to "state standards with teeth." There were still variations partly due to local funding for schools, until relatively recently, but there were enforced standards.
Case in point: My great-grandmother, a "graduate" of grammar school by 1875 in New Hampshire, had her teacher's certificate approved by Mrs. X. Mrs. X was the wife of the local Superintendent of Schools, they were considered joint Superintendents, even though Mrs. X could not legally vote! A nice touch there!  :)  My g-grandmother badly taught a one-room school for a brief period which challenged her well beyond her meager capabilities.
This had all turned around by 1900 with the state stepping in, setting standards, teachers with bonafide credentials from teachers colleges. This sharp transition from nod-and-wink standards to very real and enforced standards needs to be presented in some general way for the US as a whole. Most states followed this pattern, I would assume, though some cities may have made progress on their own before the state stepped in. Student7 (talk) 18:29, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Transition to modern standards from 19th century

message: under the section "Religion and Schools" there is the following statement:
"By 1890 the Irish, who controlled the Church in the U.S."
The section is talking about immigrants.  However, this particular statement is unclear as to wither or not the Irish immigrants, or the Catholic Church in Ireland or something else.  To make matters worse, it is uncited.  If someone can find some source that talks about it, it needs to be clarified.  If not I suppose it needs to be deleted. (Lexandalf (talk) 02:41, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Ambiguous Statments

message: First we had a statement which tried to show that the South was backwards by stating that compulsory school laws applied (in 1900) to only 3 Southern states and 32 states outside the South.
Now we have "By 1900, 49 states had compulsory schooling laws. 17 of these states were in the South and 32 were outside the South. 30 states with compulsory schooling laws required attendance until age 14 (or higher)"
Again interesting since Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma and New Mexico weren't yet states. So there were only 45 states. The last change was summarized as "more accurately reflecting the source." This seems unlikely. Student7 (talk) 19:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: @Student7 Indeed I was incorrect. I misread the table.  Thanks for the correction.  The numbers are now accurate. I double checked them. Lexandalf (talk) 13:38, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: "South is backwards" vs "South is not backwards"

message: I'm a bit dismayed that you removed the addition I made to History of education in the United States. Though the quote itself isn't heavily sourced/cited...(there is one reference on p 576 of Social education Volume 4)...it's the notion of the somewhat sub-par education of the time which the quote so clearly conveys. This isn't my area of expertise...but it doesn't seem that the quote detracts from the article's meaning.Smallman12q (talk) 02:15, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I am sorry if I hurt your feelings. the sarcastic quote is Original Research from a poor source who was not an expert on education (the American Mercury was long past its glory days in 1940) and in fact was not commenting on actual textbooks but on ed-schools profs. The lead-in ("The growth of public schools led to an increased consumption of textbooks often in a disorganized fashion. These books were often heavily criticized at the time for their incoherence and inefficiency. ") is vague (what decade or century does it refer to) not sourced and I believe it is false (disorganized? heavily criticized?? incoherence???) (look for example at Webster's Speller--by far the best selling early textbook. it's quite good.) I might add that critics in 2011 greatly admire the schools of the 1930s--really smart people became teachers (probably because they could not get other jobs). Rjensen (talk) 04:22, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: American Mercury quote

message: It may be this easy. But I live in a white homogenous rural area where, at schools that have the most free lunches, continuously outscore those with fewer free lunches (usually a sign of economic disadvantage). To the bemusement of observers.
Many of them have two parents or live in a family that cares for them. So the "socio" is still there. (That wasn't measured. Just speculating). Student7 (talk) 12:47, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Socio-economic

message: When US Grant went to school in the 1820s and in my hometown up to the 1880s or so, there was no grading system. You just sat until you tired of studying, or a parent needed you to work, or you passed a college exam and didn't need lower schooling any more. There was no "graduation" because there was no "class"/classification. Education was not metered out in standard doses but given the quick, quickly, and to the slow, slowly. It was very inefficient.
It must have been implemented with the Mann reforms, but can't seem to find it specifically anyplace. It really has to be key to the Mann reforms. So it's missing in other articles as well. Student7 (talk) 00:48, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: good question. It is covered in  "Age Grading" in Encyclopedia of educational reform and dissent, Volume 2 (2010) p 33 which says the idea of grades came from Prussia and was promoted heavily after 1848 by Mann and his followers--and we know most states followed the Mann plans. Rjensen (talk) 04:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: History of [[Educational stage|grading]]

message: Stub-sorting Park View School (Washington, DC) I made a redlink for progressive platoon school model, as I'd never heard of it. It looks as if it might be the Gary Plan, but I wonder if someone knowledgeable could clarify? The Gary Plan isn't identified as being "the platoon model".  I wasn't sure how many of those 4 words belonged in the link - was it the "progressive platoon model", or the "platoon model" which was progressive? etc. Over to you experts! Thanks. PamD 18:51, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  platoon model 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on History of education in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110110043822/http://faculty.mdc.edu:80/jmcnair/Joe28pages/Schooling,%20Education,%20and%20Literacy%20in%20Colonial%20America.htm to http://faculty.mdc.edu/jmcnair/Joe28pages/Schooling,%20Education,%20and%20Literacy%20in%20Colonial%20America.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140407070520/http://www.cherokeepreservationfdn.org/cultural-preservation-connect/major-programs-and-initiatives/cherokee-language-revitalization to http://www.cherokeepreservationfdn.org/cultural-preservation-connect/major-programs-and-initiatives/cherokee-language-revitalization
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:40, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello! I'm planning on doing a fairly significant update to this page as it hasn't been updated in a while and there are some sections that need to be addressed. Is there anyone still watching the page? I'd love to connect before I start editing. Thanks! 
EdHistory101 (talk) 10:56, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  2020 Update