Introduction to Elementary Education
Elementary Education, the education of children that precedes secondary school. This article is concerned with elementary education in the United States. In some countries it is called primary or common-school education. In the United States it is also called grammar-school and grade-school education.
Most United States elementary schools begin with kindergarten, for children age four to age six. Traditionally, the purpose of kindergarten has been to introduce children to the school setting with half-day classes. Today, children attend full-day kindergarten with a curriculum that incorporates mathematics, reading, and other academic subjects. After completing kindergarten, pupils spend the next year in the first grade. The number of grades in an elementary school varies. Many elementary schools end with the eighth grade, after which pupils enter high school. Others end with grades five, six, or seven and are followed by junior high school. (In many systems, junior highs are called middle schools and include grades six through nine.)
Grades one through three are often called the primary grades; four through six, the intermediate grades; seven and eight, the upper grades. In some schools the three primary years are not divided into grades.
About 85 per cent of the children of elementary-school age attend free public schools supported by state and local taxes. The rest attend nonpublic schools---either parochial schools supported by Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or other religious groups, or independent schools supported by private endowments and tuition fees.
Special education refers to the programs designed for exceptional children---children with physical or mental disabilities. Special education is provided both in separate schools and in separate classes within regular schools. Gifted children and non-English-speaking children may also attend separate schools or classes.
Because public elementary schools are the responsibility of state and local governments, there is no uniform curriculum. Curriculums also vary within each state school system, or even from school to school. The curriculums of parochial schools differ from those of public schools in one essential respect: religious instruction is provided and education in the other subjects is presented in a manner that is compatible with the beliefs of the religious denomination.
A few schools try to build a curriculum around experiences and problems the pupils meet in and out of school, and not around separate subjects, such as mathematics, spelling, history, and the like. In such schools pupils may work on individual or group activities that cut across traditional subject lines. The curriculum is often organized into broad areas such as language arts (reading, writing, speaking) and social studies (civics, geography, history).
Most schools, however, emphasize the teaching of separate subjects---principally reading, spelling, mathematics, grammar, science, and history---and consider much drill, or repetition, essential. The pupils receive instruction in almost all basic subjects from one classroom teacher. In reading instruction, and sometimes mathematics instruction, the class may be divided into smaller learning groups according to ability levels.
For art, music, physical education, computer instruction, and library use, the pupils may leave their regular classroom as a class to work with teachers who are specialists. The specialist teachers often rotate among several schools within a system. Other rotating teachers include speech therapists, special-education teachers, and counselors.
A classroom usually has about 25 pupils. A few school systems use team teaching, in which two or more teachers work with a class; such classes may have as many as 100 pupils.
A typical elementary school includes, besides classrooms, a learning center (library), a lunchroom and kitchen, a gymnasium (which also may serve as an auditorium), and offices.
Many state departments of education prepare curriculum guides, and schools often adapt them to fit local needs. Some school systems develop their own curriculums, using committees of teachers, school officials, curriculum experts, community leaders, parents, and, sometimes, children.
History
In colonial America education was limited largely to children of parents who could afford tutors or private school fees. Sometimes children of poor families were accepted in private, charitable, and religious schools. Dutch settlers in what is now New York opened a school in 1633. In 1642 the Puritans of Massachusetts passed a law making parents responsible for seeing that their children learned to read. Five years later a law provided that every town of 50 families should appoint a teacher of reading and writing.
One type of colonial school was the dame school. In her own home a woman would, for a small fee, teach the neighbors' children the alphabet, some spelling and reading, and a little religion. Some of the boys went on to the town school, where a man taught reading, writing, and some arithmetic. Some children were schooled at home by their parents, a practice that continues to this day on a small scale.
As population grew, towns were split up into districts, each with a district school. “Little red schoolhouses” flourished into the early 20th century. Typically, each had one room and one poorly trained teacher; the pupils were not grouped into grades. In the early 20th century the movement began to consolidate district schools into township or county graded schools.
In 1834 Pennsylvania adopted a system of tax-supported free elementary schools for all, and other states followed. Compulsory school attendance laws were passed. From 1865 to 1900 new subjects---science, geography, history, civics, and literature---were added to the “three R's” of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The 20th century brought a further broadening of the curriculum to include such subjects as music, art, and physical education. Elementary education was highly influenced by the American philosopher and educator John Dewey, the educator Francis Parker, and others. Their ideas formed the basis of the Progressive Education movement, which dominated American education from the 1920's through the 1940's. Among the movement's objectives was to reduce the amount of rote learning in favor of learning by practical experience based on the children's interests and needs. The field trip, which has become commonplace in most elementary schools, was a development of the Progressive movement.
Some Progressive approaches aroused considerable controversy, notably the replacement of the synthetic (intensive phonics) method of reading instruction with the analytic (look-and-say) method. After several decades of using the analytic method, most elementary school systems revised their reading curriculum to achieve a balanced approach combining phonics teaching with look-and-say instruction. (See Reading subtitle Beginning Reading Instruction: Methods and Approaches.)
Following the Progressive Education movement, elementary school systems continued to experiment with new approaches, including the grouping of pupils according to ability; the introduction of the New Math, an attempt to improve mathematical skills by emphasizing theory and logic; and the adopting of “open classrooms,” in which several classes would be taught with highly individualized instruction in one open space. Within a few years, however, most of these programs were modified or abandoned.
Beginning in the 1980's many schools introduced personal computers into the classroom, both for use as learning aids and as a means of teaching computer skills.