Booker T. Washington A man who unfortunately was born into slavery rose to prevail over the system to then lead the charge on equity for African Americans as a supporter of education for freedmen and their descendants. There is a sense of a strong commitment to those beliefs in this statement of his, “It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges.” (Washington, 1901). With that commitment in mind Washington enlisted both moral and financial support to establish schools primarily to produce teachers and provide numerous rural public schools for black children. A sense of his personality can be pulled from his writing, “Those who are …show more content…
In his writing about education he said, “Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.” (Dewey, 1916) he references that all experiences a person takes part in then influences future experiences in some fashion. This is the foundation of the experiential learning cycle that will be later created by Kolb. In addition to this Dewey believed education was a place to learn how to live and be an engaged member of society. In his writings you can pull apart the progressive concepts embodied in his pragmatic point of view and a great example is that the journey at times mattered more than the result, “Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.” (Dewey, 1916). He influenced how curriculum was designed and had an impact on the balancing act of meeting the children of society at a place they learn best and providing necessary worthwhile content built for success. Information was gathered from his Democracy and Education …show more content…
Yet moving forward we still have many individuals who are taking action in shaping the world of tomorrow. Our current generation of students has an all new set of issues to face and educators across the board need to develop strategies to best serve the current population. Access to information and connections to other people has never been easier through the use of technology yet this is also creating a gap in making real connections. The current landscape is riddled with roadblocks to promoting the use of education to help solve significant social problems and incorporating lessons in virtues while properly preparing for students to become upstanding citizens. Many doors were opened through the passing of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, and several iterations of that law, to make free and appropriate education available to all eligible students with a disability. Additionally advances in computers, the internet, teaching software and classroom technology allowed for greater flexibility in distributing teachable content in multiple formats which helped deal with the variations in learning styles found in and out of the