Donald H. Parkerson and Jo Ann Parkerson

The history of education is both global and rooted in antiquity. From the early writings of Indian and Chinese scholars, the classical education of the Greeks and Romans, to the work of obscure medieval monks, education developed erratically in the years prior to the settlement of America.

The link between European educational forms and American education, however, was the Reformation of the 1500s and 1600s. It was this religious upheaval that directly led to the settlement of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay and the American educational revolution that followed.

American Colonial Education

The Puritans developed a system of nearly universal primary education in the Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1642, leaders of the colony enacted the first education law in America. This law directed town leaders to determine whether their children were receiving an adequate education at home, especially learning “to read and understand the principles of religion” (Hillway, 1964, p. 20).

They were not. Since the leaders felt strongly that the ability to read the Bible would help thwart the delusions of Satan, they passed a series of educational laws including the colony’s first compulsory education law—what is called the “Old Deluder Law of 1647.”

This successful model of public education gradually would be adopted in other New England colonies over the next century and it then spread west as New Englanders migrated to New York and the upper Midwest in the 1700s. It also endured as New England gradually became more diverse and abandoned its theocratic basis of government.

Education in the Middle Colonies

The schools that developed in the middle colonies during the colonial period reflected the rich ethnic and religious diversity of this region. In New York City, for example, members of the Dutch Reformed church were active in providing education for their children. These schools were taught in Dutch until the eve of the American Revolution in 1772. In addition to these primary schools, the Dutch Reformed church established a handful of “secondary” schools using the Latin School Model (Cohen, 1974).

The German Lutherans followed the lead of the Dutch Reformed church and focused on religious training, learning the catechism, and memorizing its rules of religious and moral behavior. These schools provided a basic model for many German-speaking groups in Pennsylvania.

The Quakers also had a long tradition of education in Europe and brought these ideas with them to America. The Quakers were also among the first to accept both women and African Americans as students. They also pioneered new instructional techniques in the context of religious education.

In Roman Catholic settlements like those in Pennsylvania and New York, a private elementary school tradition gradually developed. Typically organized and controlled by the parish priest with the help of local community members, Catholic schools developed during the 1700s. Like their Lutheran counterparts, these schools were oriented toward religious education and used a catechism as the basis of instruction. Their primary goal was to prepare younger students for their first communion (Burns, 1969).

Finally, in more self-contained religious settlements, such as the Mennonites in Pennsylvania, the primary school became a central part of community life. School attendance was required in these settlements and teachers within the faith instructed young boys and girls in basic reading, arithmetic, and religious instruction (Cohen, 1974).

In short, the rich ethnic and religious diversity of the middle colonies was reflected in a wide range of educational experiments, each of which centered on religious and moral education. Since there was little organized political structure at the community level and virtually no commitment to secular public education at this time, individual churches often established schools to instruct children in their set of religious beliefs. The quality of these schools varied dramatically from community to community and they often appeared and then disappeared as a result of individual and local interest. In some towns they thrived for generations. Other communities provided virtually no formal primary schooling for children, preferring that families provide them with a basic education of reading and writing.

Education in the Colonial Southwest

In addition to the Roman Catholic communities in the Northeast, were the Spanish colonial settlements in the Southwest. In areas extending from present day Santa Fe, New Mexico (1689) through San Diego, California (1769) and Los Angeles, California (1781), Jesuit education flourished. In these communities, Jesuit priests established hundreds of primary and secondary Catholic schools. This tradition continues to the present day.

Education in the Southern Colonies

While settlers in the middle colonies embraced a variety of primary educational experiments, the South adopted a laissez-faire approach to education that was typical of England. In these communities, private schools and in-home tutoring for the wealthy planter class was the norm. Beyond apprenticeship and minimal reading education in charity schools, however, there were few opportunities for poor children (Craven, 1949).

For African Americans, free or enslaved, formal education was extremely rare. Prior to the 1800s, a few charity schools had been established to provide education for black slaves with religious groups taking the lead. Moreover, the Quakers were persistent in their support of African American education throughout this period.

A good-hearted master might allow the plantation tutor to teach the sons and daughters of house slaves to read. And occasionally a member of the plantation household might instruct a precocious black slave. Frederick Douglass, the great black abolitionist, for example, was taught to read by his owner’s wife. Moreover, some slaves were self-taught and passed on those skills to their children. Typically, however, the education of slaves was viewed as dangerous and was forbidden by law and custom.

African American slaves did have a thriving oral culture, complete with their own morality tales, rich folklore, and music handed down from generation to generation. In addition, thousands of African Muslim slaves struggled to maintain both their literacy and their religion in the face of oppression. Finally, many slaves learned trades that were useful to the plantation owner. These included masonry, blacksmithing, carpentry, cooking, and bookkeeping. Later these skills would provide the economic foundation of free black communities throughout the South. Formal schooling however, would have to wait until after the American Civil War (Diouf, 1998; Morgan, 1995).

In short, access to formal education during the colonial period varied by ones economic class, gender, religious denomination, race, and region. It represented both the best intentions as well as the greatest neglect, and it reflected the rich ethnic, religious, and geographic diversity of the emerging nation.

The Common School

But good intentions were not enough and neglect was much worse. As Americans attempted to create a new Republic, following the Revolution, it became clear that the diverse forms of education available to their children during the colonial period were inadequate for the new nation. Children needed a common set of cultural and social experiences in order to appreciate the concepts of nationhood and civic responsibility. Although the decentralized religious and haphazard approaches to education seemed to work during the colonial period, those experiments were simply too uneven and too narrowly centered on religious training.

Early on, founding fathers such as Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and Noah Webster began to call for some form of “common school” experience. In fact, for statesmen like Rush, the common school was the only avenue to a unified republic. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, recognized the importance of a “common school” as a defense against power-hungry politicians (Rudolph, 1965).

These important leaders understood that an educated citizenry was critical to the success of the American republic. Citizens needed to make responsible decisions about their elected leaders and the issues that faced them (Rudolph, 1965).

While it would take over a generation to realize the educational dreams of these and other reformers, the common school movement took root and began to grow in the first half of the 1800s. Tireless advocates of public education such as Horace Mann of Massachusetts set the course for the development of common schools throughout the country. Many of these common schools were little more than converted sheds, barns, or abandoned cabins, though the romantic image of the “little red schoolhouse” continues to this day. Whatever the schoolhouse may have looked like, countless common school teachers during this period quietly pursued the vision of the founding fathers and embraced a curriculum that would teach students the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic—the three Rs—and nurture a passionate patriotism among their young charges. While these schools would continue to include some religious materials, they represented the first secular curriculum in American education.

For young Americans of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, the road to a unified nation began with the development of the idea of “civic virtue.” By first developing the idea that there was something greater and more important in the world than your own ethnic and religious interests, teachers were then able to instruct young children as to the importance of the nation and help them transcend their own cultural orientation. When primary Readers such as the McGuffey series became available in the late 1830s, lessons on patriotism and civic virtue became the mainstay of reading instruction (Parkerson & Parkerson, 2001: Rudolph, 1965).

The Market Revolution: The Emergence of Capitalism

Providing a common political culture for the emerging nation was one important pillar of the common school movement; the other was the preparation of students for the new market economy. Not only did the new nation demand a sense of patriotism from its citizens, but fundamental changes in the American economy called for a new secular culture as well. In response, the common school created a curriculum that prepared young Americans to negotiate and succeed in its new market economy. In short, the common school was the catalyst that transformed the nation from a culture based on ethnicity and religion to one centered on capitalism and materialism (Sellers, 1991).

The Examination

It was in this environment that the examination gradually developed as an instrument to stimulate competitive instincts and to measure student achievement in relation to others. At first, the “exam” was oral and a little more than a recitation of memorized verses or poems before the schoolmaster. Later, spelling and ciphering “bees” became important measures of success as well as a form of community entertainment. By the mid-1800s, however, the written examination had become an important tool to measure student achievement and soon the dreaded “report card” detailed a student’s success or failure to their parents. As the stakes of achievement became clearer and more emphasis was placed on the examination, students realized that only through hard work and determination could they compete successfully.

Slowly and quietly through the early years of the 1800s, American teachers promoted a new political and economic culture. On the one hand, their reading instruction helped develop a fervent patriotism and a civic virtue among students. On the other hand, their methods of instruction stimulated competitive instincts and a desire to achieve through hard work and determination. These were the unique values that 19th century American teachers promoted to unite the diverse religious and ethnic people into a nation.

Reflection

While the nature of these changes cannot be determined from these simple requests, they do indicate that the New York Public Schools were responding to criticism of the reading curriculum by Roman Catholics. What sorts of material might be seen as objectionable to ethnic or religious groups today?

Religious and Cultural Conflict

But while the common school sought to encourage national unity and develop the values of the marketplace among its students, its curriculum still reflected elements of Protestantism. Because books were rare, children often brought their King James Bibles to class and reading lessons often revolved around the scriptures. Moreover, teachers were sometimes required by the local community to promote values that were unique to Protestantism, such as temperance. Finally, since many immigrant children did not speak English, they were often alienated in the classroom and could not achieve. Each of these problems would eventually cause problems for the common school as our society became more diverse.

As Irish, German, and then Southern and Eastern Europeans migrated to America during the 1800s, the Protestant-oriented common school curriculum became a growing source of conflict. Although most new immigrants enthusiastically supported their new adopted country and often were the most fervent patriots, many objected to the recitation of Protestant prayers and references to drinking as evil. Many Roman Catholics opposed these prayers and values lessons in the primary school curriculum. In Philadelphia, for example, this led Catholics to demand the use of the Roman Catholic Bible (The Vulgate Bible) for instruction in public schools that were primarily Catholic in composition. The outrage over this demand spawned a series of “Bible riots” that left 13 dead and many Catholic churches in ruins (Higham, 1988; Kaestle, 1983).

In New York City there was a similar anti-Catholic riot in 1842. This violence finally ended when some Roman Catholic wards were given the right to choose their own curriculum. But this compromise was short-lived and Roman Catholics eventually were forced to create their own separate school system (McCluskey, 1964).

While the debate over the content of curriculum was central to the Roman Catholic/Protestant school controversies of the 1800s, there were other important cultural battlegrounds between the public schools and new immigrants during this period. Europeans from many countries, for example, rejected the values of temperance and prohibition that had become an important component of the public school curriculum. For these new Americans, this moral focus conflicted with their cultural beliefs. This of course was a major source of irritation between ethnic families and the public schools of this era.

In the Southwest this situation was different. Since these communities typically had larger Spanish-speaking, Roman Catholic populations, these tensions were often diffused more effectively. In New Mexico, for example, state-supported Spanish-speaking schools taught by Roman Catholic priests were established in the 1800s.

English Only Instruction

Finally, since virtually all instruction at the primary and secondary level was given in English, many immigrants suffered. German-, Polish-, Russian-, and Italian-speaking immigrants, for example, resented English-only instruction that often branded their children as deficient and even ignorant because they had difficulty speaking English. On the other hand, when young immigrant students attempted to assimilate quickly into the dominant American culture, this caused tension within their own families and sometimes fueled resentment of the public schools. Again, this is a problem that we continue to see today among many immigrants.

African Americans

While the cultural conflict between the dominant Protestant population and other Christian and non-Christian people would continue to rage in the common schools throughout the 1800s, the question of race would ultimately have a deeper and more lasting impact on public education in this country.

As the common school blossomed during the 1800s and provided an education for hundreds of thousands of white children, African Americans, enslaved or free, often did without. In the colonial South, as previously mentioned, slave children had very few opportunities for education other than the good will of a master or the occasional charity or Sunday School. By the early 1800s things had gotten even worse. Following the Denmark Vessy slave rebellion of 1822 and the Nat Turner uprising a few years later, many southern states passed laws that made the education of slaves illegal.

In the North, educational opportunities for free black children existed during the 1800s, but were limited. A few communities allowed integrated schools, though most would remain segregated throughout this period.

More often than not, free blacks themselves played the greatest role in the primary education of their own children during this period. Black preachers sometimes doubled as teachers following their Sunday sermons and often established schools in their own churches.

The turning point for African-American education, however, was the Civil War. When slavery officially ended in 1865, a new era of educational reform swept the South with the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau. This agency established by the federal government, settled land disputes and also attended to the educational needs of former slaves by creating The Freedmen’s Bureau Schools. These schools fostered what Booker T. Washington called “a veritable fever” for education. Thousands of idealistic, young men and women from the North came south to teach in Freedmen’s Bureau schools. At its peak in 1869, there were over 9,000 such teachers in these schools. Their impact was dramatic.

The Backlash during Reconstruction

The Freedmen’s Bureau Schools were quite successful. But as a central part of the plan of Reconstruction, they were opposed and resented by many White southerners. In fact, throughout the entire period of Reconstruction (1865–1877), states in the South fought desperately to bring back their conservative governments, destroy the Freedmen’s Bureau and generally return things to the way they were prior to the war.

The tactics of intimidation worked well and when Reconstruction ended in 1877, each of the former confederate states returned political power and social control to the “old guard” planting class under newly rewritten state constitutions. While white Southerners called this “victory” redemption, for freedmen and their fragile experiment in education, it seemed more like revenge (Parkerson & Parkerson, 2001).

Education Following Reconstruction

Following Reconstruction most Southerners recognized the pressing need for public education but states typically adopted a system of segregated schools with limited state funding based on a per-capita basis, awarded to individual counties. Under this system wealthier counties received the vast majority of state monies for public education and most of that money went to white schools. Poor “back country” counties, on the other hand, typically received little state funding and blacks received even less (Foner, 1988).

Despite the promise of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (the 13th freed the slaves; the 14th provided for the civil rights of the freedmen; and the 15th gave black men the right to vote), the social and economic position of former slaves clearly deteriorated after 1877. In just 35 years, the educational experiment of the Freedmen’s Bureau schools had been effectively subverted. Capped with the infamous Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) segregated educational facilities were given the false legitimacy of the federal government. It would take another half century until the dark legacy of this era would begin to change.

Despite the lack of support by the federal government and the hostility on the part of state governments throughout the South, African Americans supported their own schools and promoted both primary and secondary education. As we have seen, African American preachers used their churches as make-shift schools that were supported by the local black community. This tradition of self-help was essential for the survival of African American education and later would be embraced by reformers such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois (Anderson, 1995). […]

The Revolution in Education

Building on the enormous contributions of Locke, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi, American educators transformed the schools of late 1800s and the early 1900s. While these reformers represented a variety of different perspectives and advocated a number of different teaching methods, they collectively transformed our ideas on education. Among the most important of these was Herbart and his lesson plan; Kilpatrick and his “project method”; Thorndike and educational measurement; and John Dewey with his enormous contributions of the “laboratory school” and concepts of “learning by doing” to name just two. Each of these powerful figures in their own way contributed to this revolution in teaching.

Herbart and the Lesson Plan

Johann Herbart (1776–1841) was a psychologist who introduced the idea of the structured lesson plan—a template that outlined the five steps of instruction:

• Preparation
• Presentation
• Association
• Generalization
• Application

Herbart was a disciple of Pestalozzi, especially with his emphasis on learning through the senses and the use of objects. Very simply, Herbart argued that when the interests of the child were stimulated, learning would take place. Today the lesson plan is a central component of instruction (see chapter 9).

William Heard Kilpatrick

During the late 1910s and early 1920s, William Heard Kilpatrick’s “project method” became extremely popular among educators. Very simply, the project method involved student learning by means of a “socially purposeful act.” Like most progressive educators of this period, Kilpatrick felt that modern world had fragmented the lives of Americans. We had become disconnected from the larger society. The answer to this dilemma was to reestablish those connections through the schools. By involving students in projects like making a dress or putting out a newspaper from start to finish, teachers could direct student learning to socially useful ends and strengthen their connection to the larger society (Kilpatrick, 1933).

William James and Edward Thorndike

While progressives such as Herbart and Kilpatrick revolutionized our ideas of instruction, William James (1842–1910) introduced the concept of “stimulus-response” to explain how children learned. As a proponent of what we now call “behavioral psychology” or behaviorism, James argued that children learned by developing habits in response to external stimulation. His classic example of this process involved a baby who reached for a candle’s flame as part of a normal reflex. When the baby’s finger was burned, however, she learned never to repeat that behavior because the consequences were too painful. While learning did not have to involve pain, according to James, it did involve the use of external stimulation and the development of habits (James, 1890/1950).

Edward Thorndike (1874–1949) expanded on James’ ideas. He recommended that all instruction be based on the scientific method and evaluated by scientific instruments. Rigorous educational testing would help teachers choose the most effective instructional methods and direct students to their “most useful role” in society. Thorndike is often considered the father of academic evaluation.

John Watson and B. F. Skinner: Behaviorism

While James and Thorndike pioneered the use of the scientific method in educational research, instruction and testing, John Watson (1878–1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) popularized educational psychology by broadening its appeal. Their approach called behaviorism has had an enormous impact on education. Watson’s research with infants, for example, demonstrated that the environment was more important than heredity in regard to achievement. He showed that through proper education and training, any normal child could become an athlete or a doctor. This notion appealed to many educators.

B. F. Skinner, on the other hand, focused on the effect of rewards in the learning process, which became the basis of “programmed learning.” While many humanistic scholars have criticized these approaches, behaviorism has had a major effect on the development of educational research and teaching in the last half century (Skinner, 1951).

The Basal Reader

While each of these ideas certainly did not make their way directly into every classroom in the nation, their collective influence can be seen in reading instruction, especially with the development of basal readers in the early 1920s. These basal readers represented a revolution in reading instruction. They incorporated Pestalozzi and Herbart’s ideas of distinctive developmental levels through the use of a controlled vocabulary in conjunction with Pestalozzi’s concept of “objects” in the form of vivid illustrations of everyday life. Incorporated as well was Kilpatrick’s idea of drawing on the interests and experiences of students by providing familiar settings for the readers. Herbart’s idea of the lesson plan in terms of the presentation and review of materials were also utilized. Borrowed as well was the concept of measuring the progress of student comprehension from Thorndike and they drew on Herbart’s concepts of sequencing reading materials. The basal readers were the first textbooks to be based on scientific educational research.

What are Basal Readers?

Basal readers are textbooks used to teach reading and related skills to children. Frequently referred to as “reading books,” they are usually anthologies that contain previously published short stories, selections from longer pieces of literature, and other selections. Typically, a basal series contains individual student books, a “teacher’s edition,” and an assortment of workbooks, worksheets, activities, and tests.

Dick and Jane

As the early readers of McGuffey and others were replaced with “basal readers,” like the classic “Dick and Jane” series, the gradual shift from memorization to comprehension was nearly complete. Basal readers provided students with graded reading and spelling material accessible for each developmental level. Rather than a first grade student being required to read (and memorize) a passage from Shakespeare, materials were “graded” so that students actually understand what they had read.

The Progressives

As the basal reader gradually made its way into the classrooms of America beginning in the 1920s, socially progressive educators were also introducing other innovative reforms. While there were dozens of important progressives that had an impact on education, John Dewey stands alone. Although the educational community did not always adopt Dewey’s enormous contributions during his early career, his work can be seen as a critical link between the ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, the progressives of the early 1900s, the instructional and curricular innovations of the 1960s, and some of the more innovative programs of today (Dworkin, 1959).

John Dewey clearly was influenced by Johann Pestalozzi especially his use of “objects” in the classroom as an instrument of learning. Like Pestalozzi, Dewey felt that learning could not take place in the abstract. He wrote that students needed to connect the objects of a lesson with the ideas behind them. From this notion Dewey developed his idea of “learning by doing.” Rather than learning each aspect of the operation of a grocery store such as buying, selling, and making change, Dewey argued that students should learn the entire operation of the facility by working in a simulated (or play) grocery store. By actually running the store, the connections between each of the elements of its operation would become clearer and learning could take place (Dewey, 1899).

For Dewey then, the abstract, subject orientation of teaching, so common in schools at that time, had caused students to lose their sense of wholeness and interconnectedness with society (Dewey, 1916).

As a result, he argued that the primary role of the school should be to help reacquaint students with the fundamental interdependency of society. For Dewey, no man was an island, despite America’s ongoing love affair with “rugged individualism.” As a result, he favored an “open classroom” environment where students could work in groups, learn to cooperate with one another, and grapple with real social problems in the context of classroom activities. In their famous Lab School, established by John and his wife Alice Chipman Dewey at the University of Chicago, many of these ideas were successfully implemented (Dewey, 1916).

Curricular Innovations of the 1960s and Beyond

The Deweys’ emphasis on innovative, socially responsible group instruction, linked to rigorous scientific evaluation, became the basis of the progressive education movement of the 1920s and 1930s. In turn, many of these progressive forms of instruction provided the basis of curricular innovations of later years, from the 1960s to the present. Of these, inquiry-based instruction, individual contracting, preschool education, multi-age grouping, differential staffing, flexible scheduling, team teaching the open classroom, whole language and magnet schools are the most well known. Each of these innovations, moreover, owes an intellectual debt to the progressives (Dewey, 1916).

The Recent Struggle to Control Curriculum and Instruction

As teachers embraced innovations such as the basal reader, the open classroom, and programs like whole language, they paid an enormous social and political price. Whole language, as we have seen, integrates all the language skills in the process of learning to read and write and emphasizes the expression of ideas rather than the correct spelling of words. To individuals outside the classroom, this technique seemed remote and abstract and suggested to parents that teachers were “dumbing down” the material. Similarly, the simplified language of the basal readers appeared remedial and the apparent lack of structure in the open classroom often irritated them.

On the other hand, parents of the 1800s were often inspired by the spectacle of their young children competing in a spelling bee, reading a piece of classical literature, or reciting a famous speech by one of the founding fathers. Moreover, parents routinely observed their child’s progress during year-end examinations. This validated the educational experience for them.

With the emergence of the graded school however, direct parental observation and evaluation gradually became more limited. Other than the annual open house or the occasional school play, parents had few formal opportunities to see what actually was happening in the classroom.

During the late 1970s, a broad-based educational backlash had begun. As the cost of education rose, due in part to the extension of services and programs to disadvantaged children, and as standardized test scores continued to fall, due in part to the larger and more diverse groups of students actually taking those standardized tests, some Americans demanded changes in education. For example, a number of conservatives rejected the more innovative progressive-based educational programs that had been initiated during the 1960s. They claimed that these programs lacked rigor and academic credibility and were seen as damaging our competitive position in the emerging global economy. Of course, Americans were the most productive in the world during this period—and continue to be so today—but the sluggish economy of the late 1970s seemed to validate their criticisms (Spring, 1990).

Others argued that the solution to our “educational crisis” was greater student accountability through “competency based” instructional programs rooted in the behaviorist psychology of B. F. Skinner and Edward Thorndike. Still others rejected the basal reader and instructional methods such as whole language and demanded and in some cases actually legislated phonics, and memorization as the primary method of reading instruction. Some schools even resurrected “Old Guff,” requiring the McGuffey Readers be used as the basis of reading instruction.

By the early 1980s, the educational backlash reached a crescendo with the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983; see chapter 2). This controversial document warned the American people that “for the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach those of their parents” (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983).

The language of this report alarmed many Americans and added further momentum to the educational backlash. By the end of the decade, many conservative political leaders were calling for wide-ranging reforms in education such as “privatization” of public education where for-profit companies would be engaged as education providers.

This micromanagement of the curriculum by local communities and state legislators has also become a persistent reality in recent years. State legislators often mandate that schools include politically popular subjects in the curriculum. These have included drug education and abstinence education programs instituted throughout the country. And of course, pressure to ban certain books from school libraries and from use in the classroom has long been a reality in our schools. Classics like William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, as well as a host of more contemporary works like J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and all of Judy Blume’s books, have been banned in some primary and secondary school libraries throughout the nation. Other schools simply remove the “dirty words” or controversial material from these and many other books and leave them on the shelf.

These forms of censorship, of course, have been challenged over the years by vigorous action of professional educational organizations as well as informed exchange within the field of education itself. Throughout this exchange, the secondary (and primary) curriculum has been reshaped and reformed by professional educators. Sometimes these reforms have been implemented in response to critics of the curriculum and sometimes they were made in anticipation of that criticism. For the most part, however, these changes were grounded in educational research and not the whims of the politicians.

Journaling Activity

Go to the American Library Association Web site listed below and make a list of the 10 most frequently challenged books. Why do you think that these books are challenged? What is your position on censorship in schools?

http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm

The work of teachers in the classroom is complex and difficult. Nevertheless, our profession has never been so prepared, so well educated, and as talented as it is today. Despite the external and internal pressures on the schools, teachers have endured in the past, and clearly we will teach the children well as we forge into the 21st century.

[…]

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