Arthur Levine was one who thought technology in our world was a specific way to grow and improve throughout schools and curriculum around the country. The text describes how Levine thought technology would change so much of everyday life and education, , "Technology is in the process of transforming the very structure of schools- the ways students learn and the way schools are organized..." (Fraser, pg. 378). According to the Hunt institute and Randi Weingarten seen these standards as a curriculum that did not excel students for the future education life. The common core standard had an approach of putting all students on an equal platform. Levine had the idea of this new approach favoring young students and their needs, therefore he was in favor of the common core standards. Based off the text, the common core standards were to "improve the academic content taught in schools." (Urban, pg. 356) Levine wanted to make sure the young students were being taught properly with this new technology, especially after the common core state standards being passed.
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President Johnson saw school reform as essential to improving the nation because he was able to realize the influence that education is able to have on the future. He then notice that the government were not supporting education as much as they should be and wanted to provide aid to help strengthen the system as much as he could. Johnson figured that if financial reasons were correlated to student drop outs or ending up in the prison systems, then it was up to him to provide financially stability for students. He also developed programs to solve these financial problems that students and their families were dealing with. He states in the text “"Head start program that panned and developed as a way to prepare poor children for school” (Urban). Furthermore, I would agree with President Johnson’s education reform motives as being essential to the future of the country. Financial aid is needed to support these students in times of need and will surely be helpful and motivating to them when in school. Whether it is providing up to date textbooks or purchasing more school supplies, financial aid impacts all areas of education in the eyes of a student. President Johnson gave another statement in the text that reads, “Nothing matters more to the future of our country: not our military preparedness-for armed might is worthless if we lack the brain power to build a world of peace.”(Fraser) This shows the amount of importance education reform was to the president and how much it matters to the future of the country.
Kenneth Clark thought first and foremost that segregated schools could not be equal, using his studies on black and white dolls, he believed that children could learn at a young age about their own skin color and how it is always perceived in society. His research affected many including the self-image and knowledge of growth that African American was capable of having. He thought that segregation across the nation slowly destructed the self-worth of young African American children; he believed that nothing considered separate could also be considered equal. Clark writes, "The next year the South Carolina legislature passed a law that said that no city or state employee could belong to the NAACP" (Fraser, pg. 276). He pushed for change day in and day, wanted nothing but equal rights within schooling for young African Americans and he was not going to let anyone stop him. The hardships weren’t not only faced for Kenneth Clark but other young students who supported him and the young African Americans as well. The Urban text states, “When other white children felt sympathy towards the 9 black children, they were also bullied and harassed (Urban, pg. 272).” Clark knew change was needed, and the futures of these children were depended on it.
The conversation between the authors of the NDEA and the Scott-Foresman Readers would be a simple conversation of mostly agreements and only some disagreements. The authors would come to an agreement on the fact that the students within this era needed to be taught in a more efficient way where there needed to be an improvement on learning, especially on the math and science subjects. The traditional ways were the students were just given the material and their job was to do what they could to learn that material on their own, yet these authors wanted those areas of focus to change. The U.S. wanted to drive the learning of science and engineering up due to the rise of Russia’s science and engineering. The authors of the NDEA wanted to create the brightest minds possible by becoming more disciplined and provide a higher qualification. Where the book states how the authors wanted the students to focus on, “personal experience and by studying the experience of others"(Fraser, pg. 253).
Examining through the progressive era, each of these men each had a different viewpoint when it came to the methods of teaching within schools. However, they all had a goal where they wanted all school systems improved for the better. To begin with, James Jackson Storrow was always in favor of the school boards and administration, he felt that’s where the power of school system were held and knew they deserved the best. There would be a disagreement between Storrow and John Dewey for sure because Dewey was in favor of the students, he believed the students deserved a very well rounded education where child-centered school should learn about the social significance they have. He thought that this was a must for students to learn because they will be able to bring in their home and community life. According to the text, Dewey had a “a voice for educational improvement through a teaching force empowered by unionism" (Urban, pg.200) Furthermore, Lewis M. Terman on the other hand was focused on testing throughout school systems, he wanted there to be tests that consisted of memory, language, comprehension, etc. Terman was compassionate in this way where according to the text, he "believed schools could benefit from a dose of business sense"(Fraser, pg.206). All men would agree that in some way the school system during this era in history needed to be changed somehow, yet the disagreement will always consist of how it needed to be changed.
Any immigrant that came into American all have the same struggles of learning English and adjusting to their new environment. The immigrants were easily judged as outsiders and far behind education since it was something not important to them in the past. Looking at the imperative figure Mary Antin, she was able to fully state her experience as a Jewish Russian immigrant, "The day I entered public school I must always remember even if I live to be so old that I cannot tell my name” (Fraser 174). Moreover, This must have been very tough for her going through these struggles daily just to get an education. The best part about this, was she was able to fight off these struggle. A lot of peers around Mary still gave her a ton of opportunities, "I remember, all because i was so impressed at the time with her readiness and sweetness in taking notice of my difficulties" (Urban 145). Not to mention, Mexican Americans were not given this opportunity of gaining education since they had a complete separate school system.
Since 1914, John Dewey was a influential educator in all of the United States, it was a necessity for him to have schools promote study habits throughout every subject of learning. It was a goal of his that Americans were to be informed throughout their young adult lives, to be able to show their worth in society and the world. Though many other educators had other ideas for High School, including David Snedden who thought High school education was valued much more. So much more that it should land you a specific job, according to the book, “Unlike Dewey, Snedden valued in a program of vocational education that was designed to prepare a young person for a specific job.” (Fraser 148) Snedden wanted a society where individuals were quite skillful in a specific area of work where Dewey wanted individuals to be skillful in multiple areas of work. It was Dewey who had his sights on a society of people who were universally skilled, through experience and field of interests, these people would be able to learn many crafts outside of just their specific field. As the book states, "They speak for the necessity of an education whose chief purpose is to develop initiative and personal resources of intelligence" (Fraser 148). The informed voters which was a significant benefit to the United States and showed why Dewey’s idea of high school was the exceptional idea.
Frederick Douglass valued literacy since he knew right away that to be a liberated African American, he needed to be literate in all ways. Not to mention without literacy, he would have never gained his freedom or further his education throughout the rest of his life. As the text states, Douglass wanted freedom more than anything, but he did not feel it was a complete need to value literacy, he more so felt it was a window of opportunity. "Douglass was a young slave, desperate - like many others to gain the window of freedom that literacy would open on a larger world" (Fraser, 96). This can still be compared to and looked as the same type of concept today; the idea of liberation is alike because the mean of which people can gain liberation are alike. Literacy is not a complete necessity, yet once you acquire it, you are able to open up more pathways to success. There would no way of improvement within education if it weren’t for people like Frederick Douglass who felt literacy needed to value much more. According to the text, there was an “Estimate by W.E.B. DuBois that about 5% of the slave population had learned to read by 1860” (Urban 121). There would be no way of people improving their self-worth and lives in general, literacy must always be valued and this was especially true within the life of Frederick Douglass and within the twenty first century today.
The McGuffey Readers were viewed as the ideal textbook in the nineteenth century because of how effective the book was throughout America. This book made learning much simpler as well as entertaining that all children wanted to read, they. They became a standardized book within many schools because they were able to teach children just about everything back then. The text states, “McGuffey Readers were the textbook from which they learned the alphabet, grammar, spelling, pronunciation and morality” (Fraser, pg. 75). It was surely the best textbook around during that time. Furthermore, it taught children the subjects they needed to know but they also taught a type of moral that would help the children grow into becoming young, confident and intelligent. Therefore, I would agree on it being the ideal textbook within the nineteenth century. It was a textbook that was sold everywhere in America at the time. According to the class textbook, "No book or series of books rivaled the McGuffey Readers in popularity throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. It has been estimated that at least 120 million copies were sold from the beginning of the series in 1836 through 1960" (Urban, pg. 88). The McGuffey Readers contained such a significant amount of positive aspects and brought levels of challenges within each book, letting students learn at their own pace which is still very common today.
Schools in Massachusetts hired teachers who were seen as having their own bias; they had many mindsets and understandings. Children back then in Massachusetts were pretty much taught whatever it was the teachers believed in, there was no standard curriculum or leveled platform of education for everyone. It wasn't until Horace Munn came out with a ideas that changed education. Moreover, Munn believed in the common curriculum, and wanted to make education accessible to every individual. The book states, “I believe in the existence of a great, immutable, principle of natural law, or natural ethics…which proves the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world to an education; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all” (Fraser, pg. 45). He proposed an idea which stated, every young individual had the right to be educated and that it should be natural for the government to support education for all citizens. As it says in the text, "open to all children regardless of station or status" (Urban, pg. 88). This is what was so unique about Horace Munn, that no matter the class, race or disability, people should be taught common morals. In conclusion, he considered that to be a good citizen; everyone needed education to make more diligent decisions in life.
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