Public Education in the United States (revised, 1934)
References and Quotes
Reference
Global Associations Of Technique
Surprisingly enough to those who expect that institutional thinking will reflect their own thought only on a larger scale, what is an asset to a mass production economy is frequently a liability to an individual or a family. Creating value in children for a mass production workplace through schooling meant degrading their intellectual growth and discouraging any premature utility to the larger society. Ellwood P. Cubberley inadvertently spilled the beans in his classic Public Education in the United States when he admitted compulsion schooling would not work as long as children were allowed to be useful to the real world. Ending that usefulness demanded legislation, inspectors, stiff penalties, and managed public opinion.
Reference
An Insider’s Insider
A bountiful source of clues to what tensions were actually at work back then can be found in Ellwood P. Cubberley’s celebratory history, Public Education in the United States (1919, revised edition 1934), the standard in-house reference for official school legends until revisionist writings appeared in the 1960s.
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Used in: An Insider’s Insider
At first the laws were optional [...] Later the law was made state-wide in application, but the compulsory period each year was short (ten to twelve weeks) and the age limits low (nine to twelve years). After this the struggle came to extend the time, often little by little, [...] to extend the age limits downward to eight and seven and upward to fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen; to make the law apply to children attending private and parochial schools as well as public schools, and to require co-operation from such schools in the enforcement of the law; [...] to institute some state supervision of local enforcement; and to connect school-attendance enforcement with the child-labor legislation of the State through a system of working permits and state inspection of mills, stores, and factories. (p. 624)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
Since 1900, and due more to the activity of persons concerned with social legislation and those interested in improving the physical and moral welfare of children than to educators themselves, there has been a general revision of the compulsory education laws of our States and the enactment of much new child-welfare and antichild-labor legislation [...] These laws have brought into the schools not only the truant and the incorrigible, who under former conditions either left early or were expelled, but also many [...] who have no aptitude for book learning, and many children of inferior mental qualities who do not profit by ordinary classroom procedure [...] our schools have come to contain many children who [...] become a nuisance in the school and tend to demoralize schoolroom procedure. (p. 625)
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Used in: An Insider’s Insider
The history of compulsory-attendance legislation in the States has been much the same everywhere, and everywhere laws have been enacted only after overcoming strenuous opposition (p. 624)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
For the two decades following the Spanish-American War [...] The specialization of labor and the introduction of labor-saving machinery took place to an extent before unknown [...] the national and state governments were called upon to do many things for the benefit of the people never attempted before (p. 561)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
New normal schools have been founded, and higher requirements have been ordered for those desiring to teach. College departments of education have increased from eleven in 1891 (first permanent chair in 1873) to something like five hundred today. Private gifts to colleges and universities have exceeded anything known before in any land. School taxes have been increased, old school funds have been more carefully guarded, and new constitutional provisions as to education have been added. (p. 562)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
The Spanish-American War of 1898 served to awaken us as a Nation [...] it revealed to us something of the position we should probably be called upon to occupy in world affairs. (p. 561)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
A new interest in child-welfare and child-hygiene has arisen, evidencing a commendable desire to look after the bodies as well as the minds of our children. (p. 562)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
[the school] reorganized its teaching work along lines dictated by the new psychology of instruction which had come to us from abroad [...] Beginning back about 1880 to 1885, however, our schools began to experience a new but steady change in purpose and direction along the lines of the new social and democratic forces, though it is only since about 1900 that any marked and rapid changes have set in. (p. 557)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
since 1898, public education has awakened a public interest before unknown [...] Everywhere state educational commissions and city school surveys have evidenced a new critical attitude [...] Much new educational legislation has been enacted; permission has been changed to obligation; minimum requirements have been laid down by the States in many new directions; and new subjects of instruction have been added by law. Courses of study have been entirely made over, and new types of textbooks have appeared [...] A complete new system of industrial education, national in scope, has been developed. (p. 561)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
However much we may have lost interest in the old problems of faith and religion, the American people has come to believe thoroughly in education (p. 562)
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Used in: De-Moralizing School Procedure
Compulsory education has begun to be a reality, and child-labor laws to be enforced. (p. 562)