Story of School: Part 2

The Story of School describes the evolution of schooling in the United States from its advent to recent history. Part two covers the first fifty years for the twentieth century and covers a significant amount concerning immigrant children of diverse cultures and heritages. Though, instead of welcoming the diversity as an experience for learning or a trait to be celebrated public school became a place to Americanize young immigrant children and scrub away any traces of culture that could have flavored the classroom. Children who spoke any language during class time were reprimanded, often violently. Most students would much rather have been working in a factory than in a schoolroom. In fact, of 500 school aged children survey during the early twentieth century, eighty percent answered that would have rather be working in a factory that in a classroom.

            This reluctance to become educated should come as little surprise considering the atmosphere of schools at this time. Most public schools had to resort to part time education due to severe overcrowding, causing those students who even made it into school to be uncomfortably cramped in class. Not to mention schools were drafty and cold, and a veritable breeding ground for illness and infection.

            However, academia was not all bad during this period. Schools serving poor urban populations served not only their students, but also the community, with food and lodging. Many schools stayed open late into the night and throughout the year to support the community beyond just school aged children.

Immigrants had even more reason to feel alienated in school with the introduction of IQ testing into public school, which were said to reflect ethnicity and race. Students were routinely labeled and stupid or even mentally retarded for no other reason than they because they came from some other country other than the United States or Great Britain.