Understanding Education: A Comprehensive Overview

Education

Introduction to Education

Education, the process by which people's abilities and talents are developed. Education, in this broad sense, is also everything that is learned and acquired in a lifetime: habits, knowledge, skills, interests, attitudes, and personality. From this standpoint, people become educated not merely by attending schools but by the total experiences of life. They learn through direct experience, imitation, and self-teaching. They learn from parents and friends, from such institutions as churches and libraries, from recreational and social agencies such as clubs, and from the press, motion pictures, radio, television, and the like.

In a narrower sense, education is the systematic, organized process of teaching and learning that centers largely in some form of school. It is with this definition of education that the remainder of this article deals. Schooling is usually divided into stages or levels: elementary, secondary (usually called high school), and higher education (colleges, universities, and professional schools). Adult education is often considered a fourth level. There are two main types of education: (1) liberal, or general, education—the nonspecialized education that is concerned with activities that all people have in common regardless of occupation; (2) vocational and professional education, the training that prepares persons for specific jobs or professions.

Importance of Education

Education benefits the individual and the society in which the individual lives. A person without an adequate education may have difficulty finding a job and earning a living. The economic well-being of a country can be undermined by lack of a skilled work force, and the more technologically advanced a nation is the more acute is its need for educated workers.

Every group, no matter how primitive, makes at least some effort to train its youth in its way of life. As a society becomes more complex, education becomes more important. Schools and other institutions play a vital role in preserving and extending a nation's cultural heritage.

Education has acquired great importance in all societies. It helps to prepare the men and women who direct and carry out the varied activities required in a modern society. Education is considered to be essential in a democratic society such as the United States. People who govern themselves must learn to recognize and preserve their freedoms, form intelligent opinions about public affairs, vote thoughtfully, and hold office effectively.

Important dates in U.S. education1635The Boston Latin School, the first secondary school in the American Colonies, began classes.1636Massachusetts chartered Harvard College, the first college in the American Colonies.1642Massachusetts passed an education law requiring parents to teach their children to read.1647Massachusetts became the first American colony to require establishment of public elementary and secondary schools.1785Georgia chartered the first state university.1795The University of North Carolina became the first state university to hold classes.1819The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot take over a private college without its permission.1833Oberlin Collegiate Institute (now Oberlin College) became the first coeducational college in the United States.1852Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school-attendance law in the United States.1862The Morrill Act gave federal land to support state agricultural and technical colleges.1874The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that taxes could be collected to support public high schools.1917Congress passed the Smith-Hughes Act, the first act to provide federal funds for vocational education below the college level.1944Congress passed the first GI Bill, granting funds to veterans to continue their education.1954The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools segregated by race are unequal and therefore unconstitutional.1965Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to aid local schools and to improve the education of children from low-income families.1972Congress passed the Education Amendments Act, which grants funds to almost every institution of higher learning to use as it wishes.1978The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that college and university admission programs may not use specific quotas to achieve racial balance. But they may give special consideration to members of minority groups.1979Congress established the U.S. Department of Education.1983The National Commission on Excellence in Education reported in A Nation at Risk that U.S. students lagged far behind students in many other industrialized nations.1994Michigan became the first state to sharply reduce the use of property taxes in the financing of its public schools.2000The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that students may not lead group prayers at public school football games.2001Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act to increase federal funding for public schools and to establish broad student testing requirements.

Education In the United States

Every child has the right to attend public tax-supported elementary and secondary schools without tuition fees. About 25 per cent of children of kindergarten, elementary, and high school age attend parochial and other private schools. These schools are operated with considerable freedom from government control. Parents who send children to them usually pay fees, but are not excused from taxation for the support of public schools. There are both publicly and privately supported institutions of higher education. In addition, community colleges and some high schools offer inexpensive courses on a wide variety of academic and nonacademic subjects to citizens of all ages.

Public education is free in all states, and school attendance is compulsory in virtually all states. The majority of states require that schooling begin by age 7 and continue to age 16. Teenagers over 16 are encouraged to remain in school until they complete their secondary schooling. Experimental alternative high schools that in some cases have no building and no set curriculum have influenced dropouts to return and continue their education. Adults who never finished high school may earn a certificate of high school equivalency by passing the General Educational Development (GED) examination, a test offered by each state.

A student with a good academic record is often able to get a scholarship for higher education. Then if the student's record is good, a grant to assist in a graduate course of study may be obtained. In the United States, most specialization takes place at the graduate level.

School enrollment in the United StatesYearPrekindergarten, kindergarten and grades 1-8Grades 9-12Colleges and universities189014,036,000298,000157,000190016,262,000669,000238,000191018,529,0001,115,000355,000192020,964,0002,500,000598,000193023,740,0004,812,0001,101,000194021,127,0007,130,0001,494,000195022,207,0006,453,0002,659,000196032,412,0009,600,0003,216,000197037,011,00014,418,0007,136,000198031,639,00014,570,00012,097,000199034,392,00012,472,00013,819,000200038,594,00014,779,00015,312,000200638,658,00016,417,00017,648,000Control of Public Education

There is no federal system of education, but the federal government through the Department of Education and other agencies has a strong influence on all levels of education. The federal government itself conducts agricultural education and educational programs for members of the armed forces and their dependents.

Although policies and practices differ among the 50 state school systems, there are many similarities. These are due to common goals, voluntary cooperation, the influence of education agencies of the federal government, and requirements that must be met to receive federal funds.

Typically, each state has a state board of education that sets policy. An elected or appointed commissioner of education or superintendent of public instruction is at the head of a state department of education, which carries out the board's policy. State boards and other agencies operate state institutions of higher learning, vocational schools, and special schools such as those for the visually or hearing impaired. The state department of education sets minimum standards for schools of the state.

The states delegate a large degree of control of the public elementary and secondary schools to local units called school districts. There are about 16,000 school districts in the United States. A few consist of only a one-teacher school; others, as in cities, are very large. A board of education, usually consisting of three to seven members, is elected (sometimes appointed) in each school district. The board sets school policy, prepares a budget, employs teachers, and provides buildings and equipment. Most school boards employ a superintendent of schools to carry out policy. The superintendent is usually appointed by the board, but in some places is an elected official.

In about two-thirds of the states there are intermediate administrative units or districts between local school districts and the state department of education. Most of these districts are county units, each with a county board of education and superintendent of schools.

School Financing

Most of the cost of operating the public school system is paid by local and state governments, the rest by the federal government. Local school revenues usually provide most of the funding; they are raised almost entirely by property taxes. States grant aid to their public schools in varying degrees and by several methods. The state funds are raised by state income tax or by sales tax and are sometimes supplemented by revenue from state lotteries. To build new schools and pay for improvements and special projects, most school boards issue bonds, the money raised from their sale to be repaid over a number of years.

Some Problems In American Education

Standards

There is no nationwide set of standards, and levels of achievement can vary greatly within a classroom or a school, and from school district to school district. Educators try to maintain as high a standard as possible while still serving the educational needs of an often diverse student body, which may include the underachieving, the average, the gifted, the non-English-speaking, the disabled, and the child with a behavior disorder.

Curriculum

Through the years, schools have taken on many new subjects—such as driver education, conservation, consumer education—without dropping old subjects. Critics argue that schools must relinquish subjects that can be learned as readily outside the school system. Since the 1970's educators have revised the curriculum to reflect cultural diversity and eliminate sex bias in an attempt to make schoolwork relevant and engaging to the greatest number.

Teaching Methods

Educators have long recognized that there is no one teaching method that fits all students. The traditional method of providing instruction to the class as a whole, for example, is more successful with some students than with others. Some students need a great deal of individual instruction, which the teacher often does not have the time to provide.

Availability of Opportunity

Population shifts into already crowded cities and a mass exodus of middle-income families into suburbs have created great inequalities in the amount and kind of education available in various communities. De facto segregation (that caused by segregated housing patterns) creates school districts where children of impoverished backgrounds, both physical and cultural, attend schools with inadequate facilities and teachers whose time is spent largely in maintaining discipline.

Discipline problems in many inner-city schools and some suburban schools are aggravated by the influence of street gangs and the use of drugs and carrying of weapons by the students.

Financing and Control

Local, state, and federal governments are all concerned with education. In many states, because of unequal funding between rich and poor school districts, many educators call for less reliance on local funding and more on state government funding.

Many critics of public education desire government financial support for private schools through the use of state-issued tuition vouchers. The vouchers are issued to parents, who redeem them at the school of their choice. Other critics favor a type of public school called a charter school. Charter schools are funded by the public school system, but do not have as many regulations as typical public schools. Instead, charter schools operate under a charter, or contract, in which the school's educational goals are laid out, and the school's success at meeting these goals is monitored by an officially designated body.

Opponents to vouchers and charter schools believe that they drain away money needed by public schools, which must still serve the students that private schools do not want. Some also oppose vouchers that would be used for parochial schools as a violation of the principle of separation of church and state. Advocates of charter schools believe such schools are more accountable for their performance and that they can more easily try new methods of instruction and administration.

Education In Other Countries

In many European countries and Japan, almost all children between 6 and 16 are compelled by law to attend school. In these countries a substantial percentage of children are able to continue their education in secondary or other types of post-primary schools. In many countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, however, a large percentage of school-age children are not able to go to school.

In most countries the public school system is controlled and supported directly by the national government. Some countries, such as Great Britain, combine central and local control. Secondary education in many countries is provided in several different types of schools —academic, technical, and vocational. In some countries, students are not free to choose which type to attend, but are admitted to one or another on the basis of tests given at the completion of primary education.

Private colleges and universities are not as common in other countries as in the United States. In the newer nations, there generally are none. Admission into national universities is often based on competitive examinations. The successful applicants frequently have all expenses paid and may even be sent to another country for graduate study at government expense.

Countries ditfer widely in the rate of literacy—the ability to read and write—among the adult population. Levels of literacy range from more than 95 per cent of the adult population in northern, western, and central Europe and Japan to less than 20 per cent in many of the countries of Africa and Asia.

New nations, relatively underdeveloped in technology, look at their schools as important agencies in modernizing their way of life. Often education is believed to hold the key to social and economic progress, and it figures prominently in plans for economic development. The more developed nations also seek constantly to adjust their educational systems to the demands of an increasingly complex and industrial society.

Nations poor or rich, developing or developed, are faced with many educational tasks. Most of the developing nations of Africa and Asia are struggling with several problems: to provide more, and better, schools at all levels; to train enough teachers; to prevent high dropout rates; and to help promote economic growth by changing traditional curriculums that do not meet present-day needs. In order to reduce illiteracy, they need not only to provide education for their young people but to teach their mature populations to read and write.

On the other hand, the more developed nations are faced with such problems as eliminating financial, religious, racial, and other barriers to universal schooling; expanding college (and, in some countries, secondary school) facilities; and meeting the needs of all kinds of persons by offering various types of education.

The United States aids education in many countries of the world through the Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps, and other government agencies; the Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and other foundations; and the international activities of various colleges and universities.

History

Ancient Times

Even before schools existed, there was need for instructing youth in fundamental skills and approved beliefs, habits and customs. Through family, priests, clan or tribe, early peoples taught their young the skills of fighting enemies and getting food and shelter, and group traditions and religion.

As civilization developed, a more formal kind of education grew up. Much of the teaching in ancient Egypt, Babylon, and India was done by priests. Trades and crafts were taught by artisans.

Ancient Greek city-states wanted their youth trained to become good citizens, but formal schooling was restricted to those who belonged to the citizen class; it excluded peasants and slaves. Sparta trained both boys and girls, chiefly in athletics and citizenship. Athenian education placed emphasis on intellectual and artistic development Boys were taught in groups, girls mainly individually. Philosophers whose ideas on education are still studied were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates.

The early Romans made education a preparation for public service. Schooling was private, conducted largely by tutors (usually Greek slaves). Law and rhetoric were emphasized.

The Middle Ages

During the 6th to 12th centuries the chief educational institutions in most of western Europe were the monasteries and cathedral schools. About 780 A.D. Charlemagne, who himself was unable to read and write, set up his palace school under Alcuin, and gave grants for religious schools to be set up in his Frankish empire. During the 13th to 15th centuries, many universities were founded, the earliest at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford.

The learning of ancient Greece and Rome had been largely lost to western Europe in the early Christian Era, when schools were, closed and libraries destroyed as pagan institutions. However, much had been preserved in the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, which was conquered by the Muslims during the Middle Ages. Spain also fell under Muslim rule and was the gateway through which the teaching of early scholars was reintroduced into Christian Europe.

Education was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and emphasized preparation for religious professions. Consequently, very few persons outside the priesthood and religious orders could read or write. Latin was the language of instruction. Most young people received no education other than being taught a trade through the guilds' system of apprentice training.

Renaissance and Early Modern Era

By the mid-14th century, the Renaissance—a revival of learning—was emerging in western Europe. Important influences on education were the growth of trade and of cities and new interest in science, exploration, reason, and the Greek and Latin classics. Schools grew in number, but were still largely for children of the rich.

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries gave a new stimulus to learning. Education, said Martin Luther, must be made compulsory, so that all might learn to read the Bible. Schooling became a concern of Protestant churches. Dual school systems developed. Schools using the native language were for the elementary education of the common people. Latin schools were for the future leaders, who prepared for university by studying the classics, history, mathematics, grammar, rhetoric, logic, and music.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Michel de Montaigne (a Frenchman), John Comenius (a Czech), and John Locke (an Englishman) criticized the narrowness of education. They stressed realism and observation in teaching methods. In the 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau, of France, theorized that children learn best when left to follow their own interests. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, of Switzerland, advocated studying child psychology as a basis for good teaching.

Colonial America

1620-1776.

The early colonists varied widely from one region to another in the importance they placed on education. The first schools were organized informally, and although they might be “public”—that is, for any children rather than just those from one church, for example—they were rarely free. Tuition was required to pay the teacher's salary and any other expenses. In New England, however, free schools soon developed. They were usually maintained by a combination of public funds and gifts.

The Puritans, in Massachusetts, believed local government should see to it that all children learned to read the Bible. With the colonists grouped in towns or large settlements, it was easy to organize schools. (Each town consisted of a village and rural area of from 20 to 40 square miles [52 to 104 km2].) Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 provided that parents be responsible for having their children learn to read, and that every town of 50 families appoint a teacher of reading and writing.

There were various kinds of schools. In a dame school a woman taught the neighbors' children for a fee. In a town school, the teacher was hired by the community, parents paying tuition or a tax. The Latin grammar school taught boys Latin and Greek to prepare them for college (which did not admit girls). Harvard and eight other colleges—mainly for training clergymen—were founded before the Revolution. Boys of some wealthy families were sent to Europe for higher education.

Under Dutch rule, New York had free elementary town schools controlled by the church. These were followed, after the English took over New York, by charity schools for the poor, conducted by the Anglican Church. Children of parents with means went to private schools. Pennsylvania, with no single controlling church, had a variety of church and private schools. Private schools often took a few pupils on a charity basis. In northeastern Pennsylvania there were schools similar to New England's town schools.

After 1750, with the growth of commerce, private academies began to replace Latin schools. Some had special departments for girl students, and there were a few all-female academies. In addition to subjects taught in Latin schools, academies offered boys such practical subjects as navigation, surveying, and bookkeeping, and girls such social and domestic skills as music, dancing, and sewing.

In the South, the Anglican Church and aristocratic tradition were strong. Education became the duty of church and home rather than of government. Planters' children were taught in private schools or by tutors at home. Some of the poor and orphaned went to charity schools.

Rise of American Public Education

1776-1860.

The nation's founders believed everyone should have a good education, but they feared the tyranny of a central authority. For this reason they left control of schools to individual states, making no mention of education in the Constitution. In 1785 Congress passed an ordinance providing for distribution of public federal lands to encourage education.

Since many communities were isolated, the states left actual control of schools to local government units. As families moved into outlying parts of the Northern towns, many children lived too far from the town school to be able to attend it. In time, the towns were divided into districts, each district being responsible for a school supervised by a local committee. The one-room ungraded district school had pupils of every age, often under an untrained or poorly trained teacher.

In the early 1800's many states depended mainly on private schools for the well-to-do and charity schools for the poor. Many children attended neither. One attempt to solve the problem of how to pay for education was the organization of Lancasterian, or monitorial, schools in some cities. In such a school, 200 to 1,000 pupils assembled in a large hall under one teacher. The teacher taught only the brighter and older pupils, who then acted as monitors, each teaching a group of about 10 pupils while the one teacher supervised. The cost was said to be about one dollar per year per pupil. This method, first used in England, was developed by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster.

Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, and other educational reformers began insisting that in a democratic country everyone must be educated free. Reform and labor organizations tried to abolish child labor by proposing laws requiring children between certain ages to attend school. Massachusetts passed the first state compulsory school attendance law in 1852.

Growth in population, commerce, and industry led to greater demands on the schools. In 1821 Boston opened the first public high school; it was for boys only. A movement for high schools that gave general and commercial education as well as college preparation began to grow. The little red schoolhouse was becoming outmoded. As good roads were built, small district schools were replaced by consolidated schools organized on a township or county basis. Courses of study were expanded; better training of teachers was provided; state governments began setting standards for teachers, school buildings, and supplies.

Unlike the Latin grammar schools, some of the 19th-century academies enrolled girls. Boston had a girls' high school in 1826. Chicago started a coeducational high school in 1856. Oberlin College in the 1830's became the first degree-granting school in the nation to admit both men and women.

The Morrill Act (1862) allotted public lands for the establishment of state agricultural and technical colleges, which came to be called land-grant colleges. Many state universities got their start as land-grant institutions.

A number of 19th-century European thinkers influenced American education. In Germany, Johann Herbart showed how teacher training could be improved, and Friedrich Froebel started the kindergarten movement. In England, Herbert Spencer argued that the curriculum of the schools should include science and other material that would be of use in actual life.

Developments In American Education

1865-1945.

After the Civil War, the need for commercial and technical training increased. Education of former slaves, when undertaken at all, took place in schools inferior to those in which white children where taught.

Free high schools for boys and girls rapidly replaced private academies. By the early 1900's the junior high school and junior college movements were under way.

As the standard of living rose after 1900, more and more pupils, instead of leaving after the eighth grade, went into high school. Since many of them did not go on to college, new courses were introduced to meet purposes other than preparation for college. Secretarial and shop courses developed.

John Dewey and other educational philosophers developed new approaches to education. A movement developed to use scientific methods in studying educational E.L. Thorndike and others advanced the use of tests as an aid to better grouping of pupils and more accurate measurement of learning.

The Progressive Education Association, founded in 1919, was influenced by Dewey's philosophy. Progressives stressed children's interests and needs in developing curriculums and methods. Essentialists, more traditional, emphasized the importance of teaching basic subject matter. Critics of both groups argued for a balanced emphasis on both pupils and subject matter.

In 1917 the federal government extended aid for the first time to schools below the college level, to provide agricultural and vocational education. In the 1920's the junior high school system became widely accepted.

The depression of the 1930's severely harmed the American educational system. School construction was halted; teachers' salaries were drastically reduced; the constant shifting of population as people sought work was a disrupting influence. Curriculums and extracurricular activities were cut back. Then, with the return of prosperity during World War II, thousands of teachers left the profession for jobs in industry. No schools could be built because of military priorities. Public school systems in many areas fell far below their normal standards.

American Education Since World War II

As population grew and transportation improved, many small, one-teacher schools were unified into larger, consolidated schools. Although some consolidation had gone on since the mid-19th century, only after World War II, when school buses became available for widespread use, could large numbers of rural schoolchildren be moved long distances to multiple-classroom buildings. The number of one-teacher schools declined from almost 200,000 after World War I to only about 600 in 1990.

Overcrowding of schools became acute in the postwar era. Schools were built throughout the United States, but in large cities, especially in low-income neighborhoods, facilities remained inadequate. Seeking higher wages and lighter classloads, teachers in urban areas began going out on strike, and the pay raises they won put an even greater strain on budgets that were already insufficient. Federal aid to education at all levels grew progressively larger.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brownv. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) held that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional and in 1955 ordered integration to proceed “with all deliberate speed.” Integration of the Southern schools was slow and, because of white resistance, difficult to achieve. In Northern cities the only means of achieving racial balance in many schools was by busing children to schools outside their neighborhoods. The issue of busing caused prolonged conflict in a number of communities.

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. This achievement sparked a renewed interest in science and mathematics education so that the United States could better compete in the “space race” with the Soviet Union.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided direct federal financial assistance to elementary and secondary schools. It provided funds to to improve education for low-income children and to build and improve school libraries. It also provided funds for educational research.

Meanwhile, the contrast between the quality of education in poor areas and in prosperous areas had led to serious criticism of local school revenues being based on property taxes. The alternative usually suggested was that public education be financed by the states and the federal government. In 1971 the Supreme Court of California ruled that local financing was unconstitutional because of the resulting disparity in educational expenditures. There were similar findings in several other states. Then in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court declared that local taxes could be used in part for funding schools, leaving the problem yet to be resolved.

In 1983 a government report, A Nation At Risk, identified a population of students as being “at risk” and exhorted states to raise educational standards. Many schools with low educational achievement had to contend with such problems as gang violence and drug use and were inadequately funded. By the early 1990's critics of public education considered it to be in a state of crisis. Dissatisfaction with the public education system contributed to an increase in charter schools through the 1990's.