Researcher: Education in the 1900s

In the book, it is important to Katie for her children to get an education. She was never taught how to read and write and she believed that being educated would help get her kids out of the slums. Francie and Neeley were very fortunate to get a chance to learn.

Schools and the Economy

Increasingly in the first decade of the twentieth century, the purpose of American schools was seen to be integrally related to the economic well-being of the nation, and school leaders became progressively more concerned with producing qualified workers for the nation's changing workplace. Indeed, during the period 1900 to 1909, there were some people, both inside and outside the educational establishment, who regarded as simply unproductive the act of encouraging students to acquire knowledge for its own intrinsic value. In fact, traditional educators, who sought to educate students for the purpose of, in the language of the day, "developing the faculties of the mind," appeared to many school reformers quaint and irrelevant. In the new social and economic climate, new subjects and new curricula were touted and implemented by modern school administrators who were eager to adapt public education to the new demands confronting it. By the middle of the decade, a coalition of conservative and liberal reformers, pushing for even stronger links between the national educational system and American business, introduced vocational education in the schools; and this strengthening school-business bond intensified to the end of the decade.

Immigration and Schools

By the beginning of the 1900s, foreign peoples were immigrating to the United States in unprecedented numbers, with a majority coming from countries and ethnic groups not widely represented in American society before this time. A majority came from countries and ethnic groups not previously represented in large numbers in American society. In the thirty-year period from 1890 to 1920, approximately 18.2 million newcomers entered the country. Because of this influx of immigrants, schools around the country—especially urban schools—were inundated by immigrant children seeking an education. In 1905 alone, some sixty thousand to seventy-five thousand such children were denied admission to New York City schools because these schools had no space for them. Meanwhile, to help immigrants and their children adjust to American society, educators in urban school systems created special courses to teach English and provide instruction in American political and civic values. In the decade 1900 to 1909, Americanization, the name used to describe this assimilation process, became the watchword for the nation's public schools.

Urbanization and Schools

In nineteenth-century America, rural district schools were governed by well-known community leaders whose decisions regarding hiring and the school curriculum generally reflected local values and local concerns; but in the first decade of the twentieth century the development of large urban school systems brought a dramatic change in school governance. Rapidly, large bureaucracies sprang up, and decision-making became the function of faceless and anonymous managers. These profound changes occurred in the name of expertise and efficiency and undoubtedly had some positive effects; but they greatly reduced the close ties that earlier had existed between schools and their communities. Now new, age-graded schools with lockstep curricula became the norm in nearly all urban areas. Within the educational system, order, regularity, and predictability were gained, but only at the expense of individuality and flexibility.

Citation:

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