- Hello everyone! Welcome back to my group presentation!

- Last time, we learned about British Education, so today we

will continue to learn about American Education.
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- And this is the main table of contents of American
education. There are 5 parts in it.
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- Now, let's start to learn the first part together: American
attitudes to education with a high expectations.
- Since the colonial (cô.lô.ni.al) period, Americans have expected a great
deal from their educational institutions. Just teaching the usual subjects has
rarely (rea.ly) satisfied the demands of the schools. Americans have also
wanted to learn to serve other social (so.cal) institutions, ideals, and
goals.
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- Such expectations invite disappointment and controversy
(cons.trô.ver.sy). Combined with the circumstances of the country's
history, they have also led to a very distinctive educational system.
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- In the colonial (cô.lô.ni.al) South, education was mostly reserved for a
tiny elite (ê.lit), planters’ sons and the ‘finishing’ of their daughters. The
tradition of class and gender differences in education would also persist.
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- Well into the twentieth century, schoolbooks fairly glow with faith in the
possibility of endless self-improvement for boys dedicated to American
ideals. The schools taught girls to play a supportive role, African Americans
to know their place, Native Americans to be civilized (ci.vil.lize) and
immigrants (im.mi.grants) to be American workers. Until recently, only a
few private institutions and schools outside the mainstream provided
correctives to this hierarchy (hi.ra.ky).
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- Since the mid-1950s (one thousand nine hundred fifty), civil rights
movements (starting with African Americans’ demands for educational
equality) have made schools a center of contention over which traditions
and ideals, what order in society and what means of reaching those goals
Americans should support.
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- At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Gallup Organization Polls
gave a reasonably (reason.ab.ly) clear list of the traditional and newer
attitudes and goals the public has regarding the nation's schools.
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- As in the past, the public was not satisfied with public education. In
surveys, over half the public felt that private or church-related parochial
(pơ.rô.ki.al) schools were superior /suːˈpɪə.ri.ər/ to the public school
system, and would send their children to private schools if cost were not an
issue.
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- Thus (t.h.us) support continued for President George (jô) W. Bush's
approval of government vouchers to cover the cost of sending children to
private schools if parents found local public schools inadequate.
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- Throughout the 1990s (nineteen ninety) attempts to establish national
standards for knowledge in specific subjects were also a focus of efforts to
improve the schools. In the early 2000s (two thoundsand) most people
polled supported such standards. Large majorities also supported using
yearly standardized tests to measure students’ progress and the quality of
schools.
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- Another approach President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) Act put in practice.
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- But by 2009 (two thoundsand nine), much of the public and a decisive
majority of teachers no longer favored the NCLB. Teachers and students
complained that ‘teaching for tests’ had narrowed the curriculum
(cur.ric.culum) unduly, undermined pedagogic strategies (pe.đa.go.gic
stra.đer.gies) for better learning and made public education anxiety
(ens.zai.er.ty)-driven.
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- The public thought the best means of improving the schools was paying
teachers better, using more federal money for schools (but letting local
districts decide how to use it), and using standardized tests and allowing
voucher plans – in that order.
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- Continuing we will move on to the next part which is:
American educational history
The colonial period
- During the colonial (cô.lô.ni.al) period, the British authorities did not
provide money for education, so the first schools varied according to the
interest (ins.trest) local settlers had in education.
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- The common view was that parents were responsible for children's
education. In the Southern colonies, schooling often came from a private
tutor, if the family could afford one. Each town tried to build a school in
colonial New England and Pennsylvania (Pencil.vê.ni.a).
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- Higher education also began early in the colonial (cô.lô.ni.al) period. In
1636 (one thoundsand six hundred thirtysix) Harvard College was
founded. At this point, church and state were not separated, and essentially
private institutions of higher education regularly received public funding.
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Before the Civil War
- Nonetheless, only five of the thirteen original states included provisions
for public schools in the constitutions they wrote during the War for
Independence (1776–81). (seventeen seventy-six to seventeen eighty-
one)
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- In 1830 (one thoundsand eight hundred thirty) , none offered
statewide, free public education. Support for common schools was strong.
- President Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party opposed that ideal as
elitist (e.li.tist), and supported public schools as an equalizer that would
give every man a chance to rise in society.
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- Around the same time, reformers in the north-east, such as Horace
(Hô.res) Mann, publicized (Public.zied) the notion that public schools
could reduce the growing crime, poverty and vice of the cities by helping to
assimilate (ass.sim.mờ.ly) their growing immigrant (im.mi.grant)
population. Towards those ends, Mann led a movement to lengthen
(len.tần) the school year, add ‘practical’ subjects, raise teachers’ salaries
and provide professional teacher-training.
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- By the Civil War, all states accepted the principle of tax-supported, free
elementary schools. Every state had such schools in some places, but
most teachers were poorly trained, and the quality of the schools was
considerably (con.si.der.rap.ly) lower in the south and west. Most
children went to school sporadically (sproa.dic.ly) or not at all. In the
north only one out of six white children attended public school in 1860 (one
thoundsand eight hundred sixty). In the south, the figure was one out of
seven, and it was illegal to give slaves schooling.
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- At the time, public opinion rejected the idea of mandatory (man.da.to.ry)
school attendance, mainly because most people still believed parents,
rather than governments, should decide over matters of education.
Moreover, most parents needed their children's work or wages (wave.ges)
to make ends meet. Public secondary education was available at some 300
‘free academies’ across the nation, for those who could spare their
children's contributions to the family economy.
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- The Morrill (Mô.ral) Act (or Land Grant College Act) set a revolution.nary
precedent (president) by laying the foundation for the state university. The
beginning of the federal government's involvement in public higher
education, the Act gave each state huge land areas for higher education.
The result was dozens (doesn’t) of land-grant colleges, which developed
into state universities. Equally (i.qua.ly) important, it promoted the higher
education of larger numbers of students and called for college-level
courses in agriculture and technical and industrial subjects, in order to
attract students from the working classes. The first colleges to admit
African Americans and women also opened.
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Immigration, assimilation and segregation (seg.ri.gration), 1865–1945
- The rapid pace of urbanization, industrialization and immigration brought
a turning point in American education after 1865.
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- Assimilation through the schools seemed increasingly necessary as
immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and several Asian nations
arrived in large numbers. The schools were expected to Americanize these
exotic newcomers by teaching them English, the principles of American
democracy and the skills needed for the workplace.
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- As important, the schools would get immigrant children out of unhealthy
tenement housing, off the streets, out of factories and away from gangs. To
accomplish these goals, compulsory school attendance laws were soon
adopted in the states. By 1880 almost three-quarters of school-aged
children were in school.
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- Around 1900, public school teaching was not considered a profession.
The average annual salary for teachers was lower than that of an unskilled
worker.
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- Yet real progress was made in teacher preparation in the decades after
compulsory attendance laws were passed. States set standards for
teaching licenses, which increasingly included a college degree with
courses in pedagogy.
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- In the same period, reformers assigned the schools new priorities and
duties. John Dewey and others held that curricula and teaching methods
had to be changed. Instead of moralistic piety (pie.er.ty) and rote
memorization, the schools had to give pupils (pil.pals) practical skills
suited to their environment and the habit of discovering knowledge for
themselves. ‘Learning by doing’, personal growth and child-centered rather
than subject-centered teaching became the goal.
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- Public schools were to become community centers and the means of
social progress. About this time, Progressive education introduced physical
education, music and fine arts, and vocational subjects (training in skilled
occupations) as electives (optional courses). These educators also
developed the after-school extra-curricular activities, such as team sports,
that became a typical side of American education.
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- After 1900, graduate and professional schools became more common.
Advanced degree programs began to transform some well-established
universities into research institutions, and engineering schools, business
colleges, law and medical schools were founded in growing numbers.
- For all but a small elite, however, a college degree seemed a luxury.
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The Second World War and the Cold War
- The Second World War was a watershed in American higher education.
To ease the return of war veterans to civilian life, Congress passed the
Servicemen's Readjustment Act (the so-called ‘G.I. Bill’) in 1944. Under the
Act, the federal government paid tuition and living costs for veterans in
higher education and directly funded the expansion of study programs for
the first time. Within two years, half the people in college were veterans,
many of them from working-class families with little education.
- By 1971, when the program ended, nearly 2.5 million veterans had
benefited from its provisions. Higher education in the USA had become
mass education and was regarded as a right rather than a privilege.
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- The launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957 spurred another
increase in the federal government's role in public education. Now the
schools were enlisted in the Cold War and called on to meet the challenge
of Soviet technology. The National Defense Education Act (1958) provided
federal money for research and university programs in science and
technology, as well as loans to college students.
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- Continuing we will move on to the next part which is:
Elementary and secondary schools
- Local control over schools became traditional during the colonial period.
The Constitution makes no mention of education, which reserves power
over education to the states or people, according to the Tenth Amendment.
All fifty state constitutions have quite specific provisions about education.
Generally, these clauses (and state education laws) define the state's role
and delegate primary responsibility for schools to local governments. As
these are created by the states, their powers over education can be altered
by the states.
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- Local authorities set up independent school districts, whose elected local
boards of education make most decisions regarding public elementary and
secondary schools. Generally, the districts organize their schools into
kindergartens for five-year-olds, elementary schools for six- to twelve-year-
olds, middle schools (or junior highs) for pupils from thirteen to fifteen and
high schools for students between sixteen and eighteen years old. The
overall structure of education has several variants progressing
fromkindergarten through to doctoral degrees. See Figure 11.1 for a
diagram of the most common of these. In the 2006–7 school year there
were some 13,800 school districts with a total enrolment of over 49 million
pupils.

FIGURE 11.1 The structure of education in the USA.