Chapter 5: The History of Schools in the United States

The Joy of Teaching, written by Hall, Quinn and Gollnick, expresses the idea that the educational curriculum has advanced since its beginning over 300 years ago. The first curriculum was little more than teaching students how to read and write in order to read the Bible and spread the word of God. As time went on, it progressed to reading, writing, arithmetic and more. The original text book was the Bible, just re-writing passages and learning them. Then the New England Primer was published and was the first official textbook in the colonies, from there it progressed to "spellers and textbooks written by Noah Webster"(181). The McGuffey Readers were the next big textbook to come into play. In 1913 Educational Psychology, by Edward Thorndike, was published "and guided education for the next few decades"(188). The progressive movement in education lasted for 50 years and asserted the idea that schools would better society and should be tailored to students, becoming one of the biggest changes in education.


Over time many debates about education, including who should receive it and what it should entail have occurred over the course of history. Education was originally only for upper-class, religious children and adults. As time progressed education became available to lower-classes in order to better society, but it was still only available to whites. African-Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos all faced the same difficulty of trying to receive an education that was just as good as the education being provided to whites. Religions such as Catholicism also faced difficulties in receiving education that did not discriminate against their beliefs. Over time education changed from being available to a select few to being available to everyone, no matter who they are.