EDL 629
History of Education in America
Dept. of Educational Leadership
Miami University
Fall 2002
Professor Kate Rousmaniere
360 McGuffey
529-6843 (w)
Rousmak@muohio.edu
Office Hours:
Class hours: Tuesday, 4-6:40 p.m.
General Objectives of the Course
This course examines a variety of studies from the history of American
education. Rather than focusing on the institutional development of school
systems, the course centers on different experiences of elementary and secondary
education in the past, including experiences by African American slaves, Native
American boarding school students, and urban and rural students, and experiences
of schooling by teachers and administrators in the past. Through different course
readings and assignments, students also explore historiography, the nature of
history in electronic and visual forms, the representation of teachers in fiction and
other narrative, and autobiography as history.
The objectives of the course are:
1. To understand main themes and events in the history of American education
through reading and discussion, student presentations, and presentations by the
instructor.
2. To understand historical perspective, or historiography, and to examine diverse
modes of historical presentation.
3. To examine the ways in which American educational history informs our current
educational practice.
4. To reflect on one's own educational history and to describe that experience.
2
Course Texts
Thomas Webber, Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Community
(Norton, 1978).
David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the
Boarding School Experience (University of Kansas, 1997)
Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical
Perspective (Teachers College Press, 1997).
Jackie Blount, Destined to Rule the Schools: Women and the
Superintendency, 1873-1995 (SUNY, 1998).
Bev Kauffmann, Up the Down Staircase (Harper, 1991).
Rosetta Marantz Cohen and Samuel Scheer, The Work of Teachers in
America: A Social History Through Stories (Erlbaum, 1997).
Course Requirements and Evaluation
o Class participation (20%)
o Educational autobiography (20%) (graded P/F)
o Review of one article of research chosen from recommended list on syllabus-written 4-5 pages and presented orally in class (20%)
o Final exam (20%). We will write the question together.
AND one of the following options
o Biographical essay on a major figure in the history of American education
(20%). Identify the person you are choosing to write about by _______
OR
o Book review on a book in the history of American education (20%) A short
(one paragraph) description of the book is due to me________
3
Class Participation will be evaluated on the following basis:
A letter grade will be assigned to each student's overall participation in the
course. This grade derives from the quality rather than the absolute quantity of
participation. Signs of excellent participation include listening and responding to
other's ideas, preparing for class by reading and reflecting on the assignments, and
taking a leading role in sharing both insights and questions for the entire class
discussion group. Signs of good participation include coming prepared to class and
participating in the discussion generated by others. Poor participation includes
failure to prepare for class, refusal to join in discussion with the class, and talking
excessively without listening to others. Please note that this class is a group effort,
and the contribution toward furthering the full understanding of that group is as, if
not more, important than simply presenting information.
Participation also includes attendance in class, and repeated (more than one)
absences will detrimentally affect this grade (minus one half-grade per class
missed). If you must miss more than one class, let me know in advance and, at my
descretion, we might be able to negotiate a make-up assignment (usually a 3-4 page
free write response to the readings assigned for that class).
Other Issues
All journals and books for the course are available in King Library. Journals
are located on the first floor of the library. Journals can be signed out for one night
only, but there are xerox machines in the library where you can copy articles. Some
of these articles might also be available on electronic journals. On the Miami
University library website (http://www.lib.muohio.edu/) go to “electronic journals”
under “Research Resources.”
The last day of class, if time allows, we may have informal presentations of
biography and book review assignments.
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COURSE SCHEDULE
[1] Tuesday, August 27
Introductions
Tuesday, September 3 NO CLASS Monday/Tuesday Switch
Day
[2] Tuesday September 10
Historiography
Readings:
Handouts:
1. Howard Zinn, "Objections to Objectivity"
2. Terrie Epstein, "Multiculturalism and the Politics of History"
3. Robert Frost, "For John F. Kennedy, His Inauguration"
4. Maya Angelou, "On the Pulse of Morning"
“The Work of Teachers in America:”
5. Washington Irving, “Ichabod Crane”
6. Walt Whitman, “Death in the School-Room, (A FACT)”
7. Cynthia M. Bishop & Martha M. Rogers, “Letters from Pioneer
Women Teachers”
8. Hortense Calisher, “A Wreath for Miss Totten”
[3] Tuesday, September 17 Education, Inequality, &
Resistance, Part 1
Readings: Thomas Webber, Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave
Community (Norton, 1978), p. 3-149
Reports:
Linda K. Menton, "A Christian and "Civilized" Education: The Hawaiian
Chief's Children's Schools, 1839-50" History of Education Quarterly (Summer 1992)
Jacqueline Jones, "Women Who Were More Than Men: Sex and Status in
Freedmen's Teaching," History of Education Quarterly 19 (Spring 1979)
Mary Niall Mitchell, “’A Good and Delicious Country’: Free Children of Color
and How they Learned to Imagine the Atlantic World in Nineteenth-Century
Louisiana,” History of Education Quarterly 40 (Summer 2000)
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[4] Tuesday September 24
Resistance, Part 2
Education, Inequality, &
Readings: Webber, Deep Like the Rivers, p. 156-262
Reports:
Scott Baker, "Testing Equality: The National Teacher Examination and the
NAACP's Legal Campaign to Equalize Teachers' Salaries in the South, 1936-63,"
History of Education Quarterly 35 (Spring 1995).
Emilie V. Siddle Walker, “Caswell County Training School, 1933-1969:
Relationships between Community and School,” Harvard Educational Review 63
(Summer 1993).
Daniel Perlstein, “Minds Stayed on Freedom: Politics and Pedagogy in the
African-American Freedom Struggle,” American Educational Research Journal 39
(Summer 2002).
[5] Tuesday October 1
Race and Reconstruction
Readings:
“The Work of Teachers in America:”
1. Daniel Alexander Payne, “The Schoolmaster in the Dark South”
2. Charles W. Chestnut, “The March of Progress”
3. W.E.B. DuBois, “Of the Coming of John:”
4. Jonathan Kozol, from “Death at an Early Age”
Reports:
Michael W. Fuquay, “Civil Rights and the Private School Movement in
Mississippi, 1964-1971,” History of Education Quarterly 42 (Summer 2002)
Alan Wieder, "One Who Left and One Who Stayed: Teacher Recollections and
Reflections of School Desegregation in New Orleans," in Altenbaugh, ed. The
Teachers' Voice: A Social History of Teaching in Twentieth Century America (1992)
Adina Back, “Blacks, Jews, and the Struggle to Integrate Brooklyn’s Junior
High School 258: A Cold War Story,” Journal of American Ethnic History 20 (Winter
2001)
6
[6] Tuesday October 8
Education for Extinction?, Part 1
Readings: David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and
the Boarding School Experience, p. 1-206.
Reports:
Susan M. Yohn, "An Education in the Validity of Pluralism: The Meeting
between Presbyterian Mission Teachers and Hispanic Catholics in New Mexico,
1870-1912," History of Education Quarterly (Fall 1991)
Michael Coleman, "The Responses of American Indian Children to
Presbyterian Schooling in the Nineteenth Century" History of Education Quarterly
(Winter 1987)
E. Jennifer Monaghan, "'She loved to read good books,': Literacy and the
Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1643-1725" History of Education Quarterly (Winter
1990)
[7] Tuesday, October 15
Education for Extinction?, Part 2
Readings: David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction, p. 209-337.
Reports:
Ruben Donato, “Hispano Education and the Implications of Autonomy: Four
School Systems in Southern Colorado, 1920-1963,” Harvard Educational Review 69
(Summer 1999).
Daniel Perlstein, "Community and Democracy in American Education:
Arthurdale and the Fate of Progressive Education," Teachers College Record 97
(Summer 1996)
Victoria W. Wolcott, “’Bible, Bath, and Broom:’ Nannie Helen Burroughs’
National Training School and African-American Racial Uplift,” Journal of Women’s
History 9 (Spring 1997)
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[8] Tuesday October 22 Trying to Do Good: The Experience of
Education Reform
Readings:
Kate Rousmaniere, “Teaching the Teachers and Changing Society: One
Hundred Years of the School of Education and Allied Professions,
Miami University”
“The Work of Teachers in America:”
1. Royall Tyler, from “The Algerine Captive”
2. Charlotte Forten, from “Life on the Sea Islands”
3. Jane Addams, “The Arts at Hull House”
4. Angelo Patri, “A Schoolmaster of the Great City”
5. Leonard Covello, from “The Heart is the Teacher”
6. Anzia Yezierska, “Children of Loneliness”
7. Jesse Stuart, “Split Cherry Tree”
Reports:
Christine Ogren, "Where Coeds Were Coeducated: Normal Schools in
Wisconsin, 1870-1920," History of Education Quarterly 35 (Spring 1995): 1-26.
Anne Meis Knupfer, “The Arm of the School That Extends into the Homes:
The Visiting Teacher Movement, 1906 to 1940,” Teachers College Record 100
(Spring 1999)
William W. Cutler, "Cathedral of Culture: The Schoolhouse in American
Educational Thought and Practice Since 1820," History of Education Quarterly
(Spring 1989)
L. Robin, “School Gardens and Beyond: Progressive Conservation, Moral
Imperatives, and the Local Landscapes,” Studies in the History of Gardens and
Designed Landscape 21 (2001)
Tuesday October 29
NO CLASS
8
[9] Tuesday, November 5
Schools
Modern Teachers in Modern
Readings:
Kate Rousmaniere, City Teachers: Teaching and School Reform in Historical
Perspective (Teachers College Press, 1997).
Reports:
Richard Quantz, "The Complex Vision of Female Teachers and the Failure of
Unionization in the 1930s," History of Education Quarterly, 25 (Winter 1985)
Robert L. Osgood, “Becoming a Special Educator: Specialized Professional
Training for Teachers of Children with Disabilities in Boston, 1870-1930,” Teachers
College Record 101 (Fall 1999)
Michele Foster, “Constancy, Connectedness, and Constraints in the Lives of
African American Teachers,” NWSA Journal (Journal of the National Women’s
Studies Association) 5 (1991).
David M. Donahue, “Rhode Island’s Last Holdout: Tenure and Married
Women Teachers at the Brink of the Women’s Movement,” History of Education
Quarterly 42 (Spring 2002).
[10] Tuesday, November 12
Teachers at Work
Readings:
“The Work of Teachers in America:”
1. Anne Sullivan, from “The Letters of Anne Sullivan, 1887”
2. Myra Kelley, from “Morris and the Honourable Tim”
3. Richard Yates, “Doctor Jack-o’-lantern”
4. Richard Dokey, “Teachers”
5. Eric Rofes, from “Socrates, Plato, and Guys Like Me: Confessions of
a Gay Schoolteacher”
Reports:
Karen W. Tice “School-Work and Mother-Work: The Interplay of Maternalism
and Cultural Politics in the Educational Narratives of Kentucky Settlement
Workers, 1910-1930,” Journal of Appalachian Studies 4 (Fall 1998).
Wayne Urban, “Organized Teachers and Educational Reform in the
Progressive Era, 1890-1920,” History of Education Quarterly 16 (Spring 1976)
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Wayne Urban, “Courting the woman Teacher: The National Education
Association, 1917-1970,” History of Education Quarterly 41 (Summer 2001)
Jackie Blount, “Manly Men and Womanly Women: Deviance, Gender Role
Polarization, and the Shift in Women’s School Employment, 1900-1976,” Harvard
Educational Review 66 (Summer 1996)
[11] Tuesday November 19 Gender, Leadership and Schooling
Readings:
Jackie Blount, Destined to Rule the Schools: Women and the Superintendency,
1873-1995 (SUNY, 1998).
Reports:
Kim Tolley, "Science for Ladies, Classics for Gentlemen: A Comparative
Analysis of Scientific Subjects in the Curricula of Boys' and Girls' Secondary Schools
in the United States, 1794-1850," History of Education Quarterly 36 (Summer 1996).
Audrey Thomas McCluskey, "'We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible:' Black
Women School Founders and Their Mission," Signs vol. 22 (1997)
S. Harley, "Beyond the Classroom: The Organizational Lives of Black Female
Educators in the District of Columbia, 1890-1930," Journal of Negro Education 51
(1982).
One of the essays on women educators in Founding Mothers and Others:
Women Educational Leaders During the Progressive Era (Alan R. Sadovnik and
Susan F. Semel (Palgrave, 2002).
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[12] Tuesday November 26
Up the Down Staircase, and Other
Constancies in the History of Education
Readings:
Up the Down Staircase
Reports:
Victoria Bissell Brown, "The Fear of Feminization: Los Angeles High Schools
in the Progressive Era," Feminist Studies (Fall 1990).
Paul Davis Chapman, "School as Sorters: Testing and Tracking in California,
1910-25," Journal of Social History (Summer 1981)
Joseph Tropea, "Bureaucratic Order and Special Children: Urban Schools,
1950s-1960s," History of Education Quarterly 27 (Fall 1987).
Julian B. Carter, “Birds, Bees, and Venereal Disease: Toward an Intellectual
History of Sex Education,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (April 2001).
[13] Tuesday December 3 Last Class
Educational autobiography due
Research presentations
Final Exam due