Reflection #19

Education has come a long way from the dame schools of early colonial education. Dame schools were often converted homes where manners, social graces, and some vocational skills were taught. After the dame schools students attended the Latin grammar schools which were a continuation of a boy’s education. This is if they could afford to attend. Girls mostly returned home to practice the “art” of housekeeping. The Latin grammar school was the first step in creating the American high school. One of the reasons that the school taught Latin and required student to read and recite works in Latin was that graduates of this school were expected to go on to college. They would then be leaders in their communities, this especially includes ministers. The Latin Grammar Schools curriculum began to include mathematics, science, and modern languages in the eighteenth century. This was a switch from the original basics of Greek works like Socrates and Homer. Most non-white males were excluded from this new educational growth in the nation. This was a time of denial of equal educational rights and a second rate education for outsiders. Horace Mann was the leading advocate for the establishment of what was called common schools or what we now call elementary schools. . These schools were open to all, poor and wealthy alike. He believed that public education should serve practical as well as idealistic goals. Elementary schools became a great success and more and more Americans were enrolled in them. However, there was a great gap between elementary schools and the university. The same place where the first tax supported elementary school and college in American, Massachusetts, was also the site of the first secondary school (English Classical School). While high schools were slow to take off like elementary schools because of public resistance to paying additional school taxes, they began to take on a uniquely American look. The high school was a continuation of elementary education and a path to high education and affirmed of our constitution.