Progressive Education. 1800s Civil War era: Half received SOME form of education, only 10% AA 1870: only 2% graduated from high school Very few went to.

Progressive Education

1800s

• Civil War era: Half received SOME form of education, only 10% AA

• 1870: only 2% graduated from high school

• Very few went to college

• Most left school to help earn money for family

Change in early 1900s

• Industrialization and urbanization called for new skills

• School used by working class to develop better workers in factories and businesses, not for them to really learn and ask questions

• Child labor laws implemented: 1900, 32 states had laws requiring children 8 to 14 to attend school

• 1910: 60% in school

Immigrant education

• Valued public school highly – different from what they came from

• Taught assimilation– Cleanliness, patriotism, American games,

cooking– Has stayed the same until recent years –

bilingual education, Ebonics, etc...

Should we teach American culture or become more “multicultural?”

Minority Education

• Far worse: “We got the greasy, torn, dog-eared book; they got the new ones. They had a field day in the city park; we had it on a furrowed stubby hillside. They got wide mention in the newspaper; we got a paragraph at the bottom…We came to know that whatever we had was always inferior.”

Higher Education

• 1880-1900 over 250 new colleges and universities opened in U.S. (Stanford, U. of Chicago)

• 1865, Vassar, 1st women’s college• Coeducation increased• 1863 – U. of Wisconsin: all women had to stand until

male students had seats• Average family income under $1,000, few could afford,

males got most scholarships• Prejudice against educated women (too independent,

unmarriageable, unacceptable friends)

AA in college

• Some began accepting AA• Fisk and Howard founded for AA men and women• Only 30 black women in college in 1891!• Only 160 total• But by 1900, over 2,000 had graduated from 34 AA

collegesReview: Booker T. Washington – win acceptance of whites

through economics and doing what they permitW.E.B. DuBois – have pride in heritage and not define yourself how whites define

Recreation

• Rural: Time in play is time wasted

• Cities: we need to relax!

• Most popular: Saloons – 10,000 in NYC

Provided: entertainment, ethnic ties, neighborhood ties, political alliances (mostly for men)

Women preferred cabarets and dance halls

• Trolley parks were popular (one from Tacoma to Lakewood)

• Moving pictures – Great Train Robbery• Sports – boxing, horseracing, and most popular

baseball – Cincinnati Red Stockings• AA excluded until 1947- Jackie Robinson• Football becoming popular• Women: ice skating, bicycling (liberated women

from old style clothing, corsets), croquet• 1891 James Naismith invents basketball

• Vaudeville – inexpensive theater: animal acts, jugglers, magicians, singers, and skits

• Theater – popular in cities, most preferred melodramas (villain a wealthy aristocrat, hero and heroine represent honest hard working-class people

• Newspapers: 24 million copies a day by 1899. Sold for pennies. Yellow journalism, comics

• Literature: more demand now, many about evil upper class, sensationalism, one of the most popular was book about “What would Jesus do?”

• Parks became important

AA Culture

• Spirituals popular• Ragtime – Scott Joplin (ice cream)• Jazz becomes very popular (1915

phonograph) – came from New Orleans funeral bands

• Minstrel shows 1840s to 1880s (black face, portrayed blacks as foolish imitators of white culture-stupid, clumsy,etc…) spread stereotypes

Victorianism

• Named for Queen Victoria 1836-1901

• Moral and proper behavior

• Self-control essential for social progress

• Amusements and unsupervised mixing of sexes seen as vulgar

Questions

1. How did the growth of cities and industry change education?

2. What was the purpose of the first schools?

3. What were schools trying to accomplish with immigrants?

4. Why would people in the city want to have more leisure time?

5. What were two of the things people did for fun?