As American As Public School: 1900-1950

Episode: As American as Public School: 1900-1950
1. Summarize the main point of this episode on The Story of American Public Education.
Now that public schools were commonplace in America, they needed to be altered to increase knowledge of students leaving them. Through reforms and political events, schools became not only a place for learning math and English, but also a place to learn other skills that will help students obtain jobs once they graduate. School was becoming essential rather than optional.
2. What political events took place that impacted public education during this era?
Immigration played a large part in public education. With so many children immigrating to America for an education, schools were being packed with students.

Children were given intelligence tests as early as kindergarten to evaluate what kind of courses they would take. High scores would mean the child would have more potential to learn. So, these children would usually end up attending a university after graduating from public schools. However, the other children with lower scores would be taught skills for working in factories or home skills. This made the IQ test a tool for which a child’s entire life was decided. World Wars I and II, along with the Cold War, impacted public education. A push for an English only education was pushed as a result of the World Wars to Americanize children. The Cold War caused many textbooks that contained ideals used by the U.S.S.R. to be abandoned in an effort to Americanize children too. This means that all three of these wars caused the education system to change into one that made its students more patriotic. When the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik into space, public education was modified to catch up with their technological advancements. Schools started abandoning some courses in favor of ones that taught advanced math and science topics. This was done with the hope of creating individuals who could beat the soviets in technological

Wirt was the superintendent of Gary, Indiana. This town had a progressive school system thanks to Wirt. He created modern schools and curriculum that included students switching class every hour. His system was called, “Work, Study, Play.” Wirt’s goal was to have every child attend and enjoy school. Theodore Roosevelt pushed for an English only education in America. To make American citizens out of students, Roosevelt wanted the English language to be the only language taught. Lewis Terman created the IQ tests that many schools used to test student’s intellect capacity. This test caused many students to only be taught how to work in factories rather than learning material that could get them into better careers. Julian Nava was one of the people who fought to end IQ testing. He believed that students that did not get high IQ scores still had the potential to be something greater than a factory worker.
Arthur Bestor had the ideal that progressive education was teaching students skills that did not need to be taught in school. He wrote educational wastelands, which talked about how schools need to return to basic academic