The history of education in America is long and varied.
For the most part, education in the colonial days as well as the first years of
the United States was primarily done at the home. Parents taught their
children to read and writer and perform basic calculations. Boys were
traditionally taught more academic subjects, while a woman’s education, beyond
basic reading, writing, and math, was limited to learning how to run a
household. Indeed, even well-heeled girls in private schools were rarely
educated in academic subjects beyond a basic level required to function as a
society lady.
As the country became more densely populated, schools became
more common, but the level of education remained the same and actual schools
were all private affairs catering to the wealthy. This was the case in
1840, when reformers from Massachusetts and Connecticut started pushing for
mandatory state-funded schooling. The efforts took hold relatively quickly
in Massachusetts, which passed the first bill requiring all children to attend
elementary school in 1852. New York followed with a similar bill in
1853. By 1918 every state in the Union had a law requiring that all
children be required to attend school.
Not everyone was happy with this idea. Catholics, for
example, were not too pleased with the idea of sending their children to public
school. In a 1925 case, Pierce V. Society of Sisters, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that while a state could compel a parent to send his or her child to
school, it could not force children to attend public schools, private schools
would also do.
As for high school, the progress has been a little bit
slower. In many cases, high school attendance is still not mandatory for
those 16 and older. Throughout the 20th century, as jobs moved from the
field to the factory and eventually to the office, the demand for a more highly
educated workforce took root. This led to a massive increase in the number
of high school graduates and people going to college. Over the course of the
20th century, we went from having about 6% of the population graduating from
high school to over 85% of students graduating from high school. Similarly,
college attendance has jumped from about 2% of 18-24 year olds to about 60% of
18-24 year olds taking some sort of post high-school course, either at a four
year college or a two year community college.
Today, we live in a contentious society, with public schools
often at the center of furious debates over culture, spending, economics, and
religion as well as the future and direction of our country. Tests,
standards, bilingual schools, school choice, all these debates that everyone
thinks are so new are old news. People have been debating all these issues
since the institution of mandatory publicly funded education. Having a country
as big and varied as the United States with a cookie-cutter style education has
created many problems, but people forget that it has solved many problems as
well. For example, the fact that we have free schooling through high school
means that the workforce is more highly educated and can handle the more
technical jobs of a technology-based economy. Schools were one of the
first places to be integrated, leading to increased rights for minorities and a
more egalitarian society.
For more information on the history of education in America,
please see
PBS' History
of Public Schools and History of Public Education