This posting continues a
look at school reformers of the 1840s and beyond in the nineteenth
century. The purpose of this visit is to
ask how parochial/traditional views over citizenship and education developed in
America’s past. The aim is to test the
claim that that construct held dominance during the nation’s past from colonial
years to the years just after World War II.
And if true, how did Americans experience that dominance?
The last two postings gave the reader an introduction to
the works of Horace Mann and Catherine Beecher.
Mann is noted for starting the nation’s first statewide educational
system in Massachusetts and Beecher was a pioneer in promoting women in the
teaching profession including her efforts in recruiting and training women to
go out west and teach in frontier schools.
Both dealt with the strict tradition of Puritanical thought and its effect on how schooling was conducted.
Generally, they worked toward bending the prevalent
religious influence toward more secular leanings. Specifically, they favored curricular content
that emphasized communal deeds instead of instilling Protestant doctrine. They
… tended to see schools as secular churches: community centers where any child could be
improved – even religiously “saved” – through education. [They] believed it was more important to
teach a child good deeds than good doctrine; to focus less on the details of
literature or mathematics than to create faithful, decent, socially adept young
men and women – people who could resist the mob rule of the French Revolution
and the Ursuline convent arson.[1]
And women doing this work
equated to missionary work of priest and monks and should be rewarded with
social rewards over money or political power.
But among the consequences of such a policy, a pedagogic
calling suffered in that it began being viewed as a philanthropic pursuit
instead of a professional career. This
led to issues in education. They
included: as moral agents did this view
of teachers interfere with the role of parents?
And, if based on Protestant views of morality, how were other religious
traditions to be treated or respected?
This was particularly true concerning Catholics and Jews.
A chief critic of these developments was a contemporary
journalist, Orestes Brownson. He
complained of this religious bias toward WASP beliefs. This converted Catholic also saw Mann’s deprioritizing
of academic curricula to a more communal emphasis as impractical when it came
to the interests of the working class.
They needed, in his eyes, vocational training and should be informed of
labor rights.
For good or ill, Mann and Beecher’s bias prevailed across
the nation’s public schools. That is,
American education took on this more communal, faith-based education over
academic rigor. This writer, a product
of 1950s-1960s Catholic parochial schools, can recall what he was led to
believe: that public schools just did
not measure up academically to Catholic schools.
And he was exposed to the
difference upon being moved from New York City to Miami, Florida back in 1958
and having to go to a public school for two and half months. This was in the fourth grade and he found
himself changing from being a failing student to being one of the brightest
kids in the class. His new classmates
were being taught material that he had been exposed to years earlier especially
in math. He loved his new situation but
was moved back to a Catholic school as the new school year started in the fall.
Oh well!
The question he asks today
is, why this dichotomy? Can one be
taught and encouraged to be communal and academic at the same time? Better still, can one use academics to
advance communal learning? Of course,
this blog maintains that one can and one should see learning and education in
these terms.
[1]
Dana
Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled
Profession (New York, NY: Doubleday,
2014), 30. The historical information in
this posting is drawn from this source.
The arson reference is a fire Mann had to investigate earlier in his
career. The fire burnt down a Catholic
convent.
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