Education
Before offering more details supporting my opinion, perhaps it would be appropriate to provide some background knowledge of Schools in America. For this paper, we will use T. H. Huxley’s explanation from his lecture “A Liberal Education” in which he defines education as “the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature” embracing “things and their forces” as well as people and “their ways” and the application of what is absorbed (163).
Education has been a huge concern since the earliest days of American settlement. With hopes to better unify the new country post-Revolutionary War, textbooks were printed to standardize spelling and articulation as well as to inspire patriotism and specific religious beliefs in students (Schmitz). Meanwhile, these textbooks comprised prejudicial stereotypes of the Native American people and specific immigrant groups (Schmitz). Minority groups were not offered the same opportunities for education that wealthy whites had and they were not respected. During this time the standards for education were far from formal and were heavily influenced by religion. Before public schooling, a child’s education came from the family unless they were wealthy enough to afford schooling. Schooling was not a requirement so
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Consequently, public schools existed in the colonies thanks to the Puritans pushing to spreads education. The Puritans believed it to be important to teach children religion as well as reading and writing. Early on the Puritans set guidelines for family’s where they “required parents to teach their children to read and also required larger towns to have an elementary school, where children learned reading, writing, and religion.” (Schmitz). Many poor and middle-class white children, as well as nearly all black children went without schooling. This was particularly worse in the country side down