EDFD 221 - Teacher Wars Module 1 Notes PDF

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Professor Elizabeth Rivera Rodas...

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02/04/2021

“Teacher Wars” Introduction, pp 1-11 - Dana Goldstein -

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“Public school teaching had become the most controversial profession in America.” Chris Christie negatively affected New Jersey public school teachers causing them to rise up against him for $1 billion budget cuts in education and $1.6 billion budget cuts in corporate taxes. Many powerful people seemed unsatisfied with the job security of public school teachers. “It is true that the majority of American teachers have academically mediocre backgrounds.” Many of them do not have credible sources and backgrounds that can deem them a good teacher. Many teachers have posted public resignations from being teachers. One has expressed that the school curriculum has become too strict to follow and has left no room for creativity and control. More and more teachers have been becoming less satisfied with their profession between 2008 and 2012. In South Korea, teachers are regarded as “Nation Builders” In Finland, male and female teachers are the most desirable occupation for a spouse. Issues in American public education reside in situations such as male teachers who are unqualified and should be replaced by “purer (and cheaper) women”. Teachers back in the 18th or 19th century were asked to close troubling gaps between religions, racial inequality, and other things that divide the people. There have been many arguments about how teachers should be trained and educated in order to be qualified to do their job Teacher-quality advocates estimate that somewhere between 2 and 15 percent of current teachers cannot improve their practice to an acceptable level and ought to be replaced each year. Teachers are getting paid bonuses for higher student test scores (this was attempted in the 1920s, early 1960s, and 1980s). There is evidence stating that teachers who leave their professions after a few years are worse than teachers who stay. Teachers are more likely to get fired according to statistics Mr. Tunney taught his classes outside from the demands of the curriculum and his students really enjoyed that. He retired and the community mourned. We don’t have to eradicate economic insecurity to improve our schools. “We must focus less on how to rank and fire teachers and more on how to make day-to-day teaching an attractive, challenging job that intelligent, creative, and ambitious people will gravitate toward. (I think that students should also have a

say in what deems teachers “bad”. If a teacher is teaching his or her class some material that is not in the curriculum but students are really learning from it and applying it to their everyday lives, then the teacher has done his or her job. The essential goal should be for students to walk out of the classroom learning something valuable, impactful and meaningful.) Documentary: The Story of American Education, The Common School, 1770-1890 ** Part 1 - ⅕ of the American population consists of public school students K-12 - Teachers are about ¼ of the American population - School has defined the shape of our young lives - Meaning and practice of democracy in American Education - Dames school (romanticized education; woman surrounded by little children around her skirt) - Most schools were related to the protestant Bible -- The word of God - Students were studying based on the Bible; scared students out of doing something bad - Only the most privileged had the means to continue their education through college/university ** Part 2 - Webster’s speller became America’s textbook; to be distinct from British - You have to learn to read and write to be a citizen in a democracy country - 1770: Thomas Jefferson wanted 3 years of public school to all children with advanced education to a select few - “Raking a few geniuses from the rubbish” - Thomas Jefferson

Catharine E. Beecher: Education of Female Teachers (1835) -

There is a debate having to do with Christianity in schools and how the Bible is incorporated in the school system “Wherever the Bible might go, there the system of Christianity must be…” Massachusetts system of Common Schools: Recognizes and affirms the sovereign rights of the Creator - Guards the religious rights of the creature - Seeks to remove all hindrances - Promotes paternal communion between man and its Maker - “Free School System” - Knows no distinction of rich and poor

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They don’t discriminate with what kinds of people walk in. They welcome everyone no matter their path of life Catharine E. Beecher - Advocate for expanding women’s opportunities by educating them and allowing them to be teachers - Wanted to create new opportunities for women - Middle class white Protestant woman - Changed the teaching profession from being overwhelmingly male to female - Convinced females and families that women’s willingness to work for a lower salary and their maternal work ethic are the traits qualified for the teaching profession - Also argued for women’s education Particular duties of the female sex include caring for the health, formation of character, and for the future citizens of generations to come Women are the guardians of the nursery, the companion of childhood, and the constant model of imitation Children form their character based on what they are influenced by at school Mismanagement and indulgence at home may counteract bad influences of school to some extent Education of the lower class is deteriorating because it respects moral and religious restraints People must volunteer to include the Bible and religious practices into schools if they choose Measure of the system of means must be employed.

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02/16/2021

Feminization of Teaching: Teacher Wars Chapter 1 pp 12-32 (Missionary Teachers) ➔ ➔ ➔ ➔ ➔ ➔ ➔ ➔

Litchfield Female Academy: a private school in a genteel Connecticut town Religious revival in 1815 in that female academy There were few “truly” public schools in the United States during those years. Schools were generally organized by town councils, local churches, urban charitable societies, or ad hoc (when necessary or needed) groups of neighbors Tuition payments and tax dollars supported the schools Students from ages five to sixteen were learning together Teachers were almost always male School was held only 12 weeks per year (6 in the summer and 6 in the winter)

➔ Many conversions happened in this female school, but Catharine Beecher was one who refused to be converted. She was the daughter of a celebrity preacher. ➔ Catharine Beecher’s father was Lyman Beecher, a man who preached a powerful sermon at the wake of Alexander Hamilton. He preached predestination, the doctrine that holds that a baby is fated from birth for either salvation or damnation. ➔ Catharine was far more passionate about poetry than religion. She often disagreed with her father’s teachings even though her and her father were very close. ➔ Catharine was engaged to Alexander Metcalf ➔ Catharine Beecher and Horace Mann defined public education as America’s new, more gentle church, and female teachers as the ministers of American morality. ➔ Catharine Beecher lost her fiance because he drowned in a shipwreck. She was grieving and devastated. ➔ She found the diaries of her dead fiance when she traveled to his family home. She discovered that he was torn between religion and his passion for math and science. ➔ Her fiance thought he was able to save the universe from destruction using his mathematical and scientific expertise (this was a mania) ➔ Her fiance also would never achieve conversion. ➔ Catharine Becher was moved by the fact that her fiance also didn't want to achieve conversion and also wanted to continue with the teaching profession. ➔ Catharine Beecher wrote to her father saying, “The heart must have something to rest upon, and if it is not God, it will be the world.” ➔ Beecher believed that public schools could serve society the same as private faith ➔ Beecher came to believe that women were likely to be the most effective teachers of both boys and girls ➔ She thought of politics as a “dirty game” that would corrupt women’s God-given virtue. ➔ She established the Hartford Female Seminary and attracted 100 students who hoped to become teachers. ◆ Students took classes in Latin, Greek, algebra, chemistry, modern languages, and moral and political philosophy. ◆ Beecher believed in hands-on learning through field trips and science experiments. ◆ The Hartford Female Seminary was controversial. ◆ Some local parents objected to the teachings of classics ◆ Parents didn’t want their daughters learning about philosophy ◆ Beecher’s Female Education essay responded directly to those critics

➔ Catharine Beecher was known as America’s first media darling school reformer. ➔ She declared that she would never marry. She was living in a time period of people who had the mentality that unmarried women couldn’t contribute to society ➔ In Beecher;s 1846 lecture, she cited a New York State report saying that male teachers are incompetent, intemperate, coarse, hard, unfeeling men, too lazy or stupid to be entrusted with the care of children. ➔ “A woman needs support only for herself while a man requires support for himself and a family.” - false assumption Horace Mann, 10th and 12th Annual Reports to the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1846 and 1848 - These reports were his most powerful and effective tool in building support for his notion of the kind of school the new nation needed. - Each report pushed the need for the public to support a common school education if democracy was to thrive. - Mann believed in transfer of private resources to the public good through taxation when necessary for a cause such as public education - Mann resigned his position to take the congressional seat to which he had been elected. - In his last report, the 12th, he affirmed the importance of the schools while stressing their fundamentally religious character. TENTH ANNUAL REPORT (1846) - Mann believes in natural law or natural ethics - Believes it is the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all. - In the republican government, education is enough to qualify each citizen for the civil and social duties he will be called to discharge, teaches the individual the great laws of bodily health, and qualifies for the fulfillment of parental duties, etc. - “The cry, ‘stop thief’, comes from the thief himself.” - Even though schools had existed in Massachusetts for over 200 years, Horace Mann sought to change the education system and proposed ideas that he thought would benefit the new nation more than the current education system of the time. - He proposed the idea of “Common Schools” and later became known as the “Father of the Common School”. - The common schools were controversial when they were first proposed. - “It is the absolute right for every human being that comes into this world to have access to education.”

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“It's the government’s job to ensure this and provide any means necessary for the education of all people.” - The goal for these schools was to provide a common education for all people regardless of gender, race, social or financial standing, and religion. - These common schools had a very heavy Protestant background even though they claimed to accept all religions and be non-denominational. TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT (1848) - The common school has a universality in its operation, serving generation after generation - This common school was known to be able to create inventors, discoverers, Presidents, Professors, Generals, etc. - Morality is crucial; “evil triumphed over good, wrong follows right” - common school education will be brought to teach morals - Believes religion should not be taught in the common school, its a personal choice - “We teach to enable him to judge himself” - “For a government to predetermine the religious opinions of children is wrong” - “Keep the schools free” DISCUSSION MODULE 2 Horace Mann viewed the purpose of "common schools" to serve as a convenience to all people. In other words, Mann believed that the "common schools" would consist of an education system that was available and accessible to all individuals no matter their race, gender, religion, or cultural background. He also wanted the "common school" to teach morality so that people can differentiate right from wrong, good from evil. The twelfth report made by Horace Mann, in regards to moral education, says this, "Moral Education is a primal necessity of social existence. The unrestrained passions of men are not only homicidal, but suicidal; and a community without a conscience would soon extinguish itself. Even with a natural conscience, how often has Evil triumphed over Good!" (Mann, 1872). Mann was trying to defend the idea that many people have been stealing, killing, committing fraud and other crimes and it is important for the 'common schools" to introduce the instruction of morality so that the people living in society can live peacefully with one another. Not only does Mann believe that the "common school" can teach morality, he also believes firmly in the fact that no type of religion whatsoever should be taught to people in schools. He argues that it is unfair for a child to be strictly taught a religion that he or she might not agree with or support when they become older and more mature. Mann's report says, "The elements of a political education are not bestowed upon any school child, for the purpose of making him vote with this or that political

party, when he becomes of age; but for the purpose of enabling him to choose for himself, with which party he will vote. So the religious education which a child receives at school, is not imparted to him for the purpose of making him join this or that denomination, when he arrives at years of discretion, but for the purpose of enabling him to judge for himself…” (Mann, 1872). Mann posits that in this way, students have the freedom to do with the instruction they are given as they please. Religion being taught in the “common schools” is to be by choice or consent. Even though Catharine Beecher was seeking to change the education system to make it accessible to all girls (and didn’t focus on boys), her beliefs in what the “common school” should be like was no different from how Horace Mann felt about the matter. It was said in the “Missionary Teachers” article that, “The Litchfield Female Academy had been organized around religious piety, public shaming, and social positioning. Each morning, the students would queue up to submit to a barrage of leading questions posed by the commanding headmistress: Have you been patient in acquiring your lessons?” Further down the essay, it states, “With guidance from her younger brother Edward, who had been educated at Andover and Yale, she was able to grasp the challenging material quickly and impart it to her pupils. Didn’t all girls deserve the opportunity Beecher was now offering Fisher’s sisters -- to undertake broad intellectual pursuits? And if Beecher could successfully learn and teach serious subject matter -- not just the ‘domestic arts’ -- why couldn’t other smart young women?” (Goldstein, 2014). What was trying to be said, here, was that girls shouldn’t go to school to essentially learn manners and good etiquette, but instead, to learn different subjects that can contribute to their knowledge of how the country or the world works. This could be done by taking classes like philosophy and world language. This is what Beecher defended in her essay that responded to the critics who disagreed with this idea. As far as religion goes, I think that Beecher had the same views as Mann, regarding the idea that learning religion and sticking to it should be a personal choice. In the same article recently mentioned above, Beecher made this statement as she was writing to her father, “The heart must have something to rest upon, and if it is not God, it will be the world” (Goldstein, 2014). This statement gave me the idea that Beecher was saying how people have a choice on where their heart should settle, whether that would be in public concerns or religious concerns. It all depends on the individual....