Composition: History & Theory: 1900 - 1919
1900-1919
Description
- 1900s: Written rhetoric and English became dominant over oral rhetoric and the Classics
- 1900-20: Current traditional rhetoric at Harvard
- 1900-20: Rhetoric of liberal culture at Yale
- 1909: formation of NAACP
- 1910: first junior high school (Berkeley, CA)
- 1911: NCTE founded
- 1912: Author’s League formed as a kind of trade union for writers
- 1913: Vocational Guidance Association
- Dewey and progressive education (beginning of transactional rhetoric)
- 1913: The development of Teaching Assistantships
- 1914: WWI
- 1916: publication of Binet and Simon’s book on children’s intelligence (foreshadowing of Stanford-Binet IQ test)
- 1919: the American Legion organization was founded by WWI vets who feared the import of radical ideas from Europe. They contributed heavily to “Americanization Movement” which gave us the 1950s version of the American family—white, white picket fence, 2 kids, blond, at-home mother, middle-class, happy. This image was created by PR.
In The American School From the Puritans to No Child Left Behind (2008), Joel Spring outlines how social functions of the school system (the value of which were endorsed by John Dewey at the 1902 NEA national convention) were created to manage the influx of immigrants in the late nineteenth century, which, “together with industrialization, and expanded urban area created a host of social problems, especially in cities,” including a fear of disease from overcrowded ghettos, growing alienation due to a perceived loss of community, the threat of immigrants’ influences on traditional American “economic and political” values, and a believed lack of social control leading to “increased crime and poverty” (213). In the process, Spring links social movements in education to a time in American history rife with “court rulings supporting segregation and cultural genocide” and argues that educational leaders, like John Dewey, accepted racism as “part of the ideology underpinning the American republic” (217).
A number of perceived threats were directly addressed by the educational system in general during this time. The fear of the spread of diseases from urban citizens accustomed to rural backgrounds was addressed by “Nurses, health facilities, and showers” along with “special instructional programs” about hygiene for students (213). The fear of the spread of radical ideologies from children of immigrants was addressed by “Americanization programs” which were offered to assimilate these children into American life/ideology. School cafeterias “Americanized” their dietary habits, and home economics courses “Americanized” immigrant households (213). These programs were used between 1880 and 1930, and they focused on Southern and Eastern European immigrants while immigrants from Asia and South America were not a focus until changes in immigration laws in the 1960s (215). The 1924 Immigration Act worked in two ways to restrict immigration: 1) it limited the number of immigrants that could enter the country each year, and 2) it placed percentages on certain Southern and Eastern European and Asian nationalities that could immigrate each year (313). Immigration quotas favored British, German, and Scandinavian immigrants: nationalities which were deemed to be more intelligent and more fit to better serve American society. Americanization was different for Mexican Americans than it was for Eastern European immigrants. Mexican Americans were segregated and put into programs similar to those used on American Indians to “strip away Mexican values and culture and replace the use of Spanish with English” (238). Administrators thought speaking English would make them more entrepreneurial (239). The government did not enforce compulsory laws, used the language barrier as an excuse for segregation, and taught racist texts. The fear of increased crime and poverty (Juvenile Delinquency) was addressed with playgrounds and after school activities which were developed to keep kids off the streets and to prevent crime (213). The threat of alienation in urban environments was addressed by the creation of “auditoriums and special facilities” to host community activities (214).
Spring also describes the state of education at the end of the 19th century through the 1930s as a time in which equality of opportunity and positions of power in society based on individual merit and achievement instead of wealth or influence was the primary goal. An educational system scientifically managed to educate everyone based on their eventual place in society was seen as key to achieving this goal. Spring examines various factors that lead to both the establishment and the disintegration of the meritocracy, claiming that leading school board members and administrators used the reformed system to serve personal agendas and foster racial discrimination. Spring argues that although the idea of the meritocracy fell to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the goal of managing “human capital” still persists in the current educational system (325).
Date of Upload
3/13/09