Foundations of Education

1. Historical Foundations of
Education

2. Historical Lenses
 Celebrationist historians…see the brighter side of
historical events
 Liberal historians…focus on conflict, stress,
inconsistencies
 Revisionist historians…learn more by studying what
has been wrong than what has been right
 Postmodernist historians…see history through the
unique lenses of social class, race, ethnicity, gender,
age

3. Learning Outcomes
 List important early educators in the world
 Detail major educational accomplishments of
the early Eastern societies
 Analyze the life of the colonial school teacher
 Articulate the roles government played in
colonial America
 Analyze how an understanding of early
American history informs today’s teacher

4. The beginnings of Education
 Informal education…all peoples have cared for their
children and prepared them for life
 Hindu and Hebrew education…how to live a good life
 Chinese education…Lao-tszu and Confucius
 Egyptian education…education provided for
privileged males
 Eastern civilizations developed education prior to
Western civilizations, for the most part

5. Western Education
 The Age of Pericles (455-431bce), city states
in Greece
 Sparta, from 8 to 18, boys were wards of the
State…education to develop courage,
patriotism, obedience, cunning, and physical
strength (little intellectual content)
 Athens, heavily stressed intellectual and
aesthetic objectives

6. Western world’s first great
philosophers
 Socrates…the Socratic method: a way of
teaching that centers on the use of questions
by the teacher to lead students to certain
conclusions…Socrates’ fundamental
principle, “Knowledge is virtue.”
 Plato…Republic recommendations for the
ideal society…three classes of people:
artisans, soldiers, philosophers

7. Greek philosophers
 Plato… “A good education is that which gives to the
body and to the soul all the beauty and all the
perfection of which they are capable.”
 Aristotle…a person’s most important purpose in life
is to serve and improve humankind…Aristotle was
scientific, practical, and objective…had the greatest
influence on thinking through the Middle Ages
 Females and slaves did not possess the intelligence
to be educated. (Plato and Aristotle)
 All paid employment absorbs and degrades the
mind. (Aristotle)

8. Western Education—The Romans
 In 146 BCE the Romans conquered Greece,
many of the advances of the Roman Empire
inspired by the enslaved Greeks
 Between 50 BCE and 200 CE, an entire
system of schools developed
 Quintilian (35-95 CE) described current
practice and recommended the type of
system needed in Rome…very humanistic

9. Education in the Middle Ages
(476-1300)
 Roman Catholic Church the greatest power
in government and education (by 476, the fall
of the Roman Empire)
 The Dark Ages…earthly life as nothing more
than a way to a better life hereafter
 Charlemagne (742-814) valued education,
and found Alcuin (735-804) and focused on
the seven liberal arts (trivium and
quadrivium)

10. The Revival of Learning
 Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) “more than any other
person helped to change the church’s views on
learning”…rooted in the ideas of Aristotle, led to the
medieval universities, formalized scholasticism (the
logical and philosophical study of the beliefs of the
church)
 The East had no dark ages. Mohammed (569-632)
led a group of Arabs from northern Africa into
southern Spain…spread slowly throughout Europe,
significant advances in science and mathematics

11. Education in Transition (1300-1700)
 Renaissance and Reformation
 Renaissance represented the protest against
the dogmatic authority of the church over
social and intellectual life…revival of
classical learning called humanism
 Reformation represented a reaction against
corruption in the church which kept most
people in ignorance

12. The Reformation
 Formal beginning in 1517…ninety-five theses of Martin
Luther…his disagreements with the Church
 The Church believed its duty was to pass on the correct
interpretation of the Bible to the laity…Luther thought each
should interpret for self, and thus individual education was
important…to attain salvation
 Luther’s coworker in education, Philipp Melanchthon, stressed
universal elementary education…education should be provided
for all regardless of class, compulsory for both sexes…state
controlled and state supported

13. Education in Transition
 Ignatius Loyola(1491-1556), to combat the
Reformation, began the Jesuits in 1540…
established schools to further the goals of
the Catholic Church, were involved with
teacher training from early on
 Comenius (1592-1670),wrote many texts,
first to use illustrations, writings based on
science
 John Locke(1632-1704) tabula rasa

14. Modern Period (1700 to present)
 Descartes(1596-1650), laid the foundations
for the modern period and rationalism
 Reason is supreme, the laws of nature are
invariable, truth can be verified empirically
 Frederick the Great (1712-1786), leader of
Prussia, friend of Voltaire, interested in better
training for teachers

15. Emergence of the Common Man
 A period during which developed the idea that
common people should receive at least a basic
education as a means to a better life
 Rousseau…most important educational work, Emile
(1762) about the liberal education of youth…
naturalism, education must be natural not artificial
“…we ascribe too much importance to words. With
our babbling education we make only babblers.”
Children are born good but corrupted by society

16. The Emergence of Common Man
 Pestalozzi (1746-1827) Swiss educator who put
Rousseau’s theories into practice… educators from
all over the world came to view his schools…unlike
most teachers of his time, he felt students should be
treated with love and kindness
 Herbart (1776-1841) studied under Pestalozzi,
organized the educational psychology…preparation,
presentation, association, generalization, application
 Froebel (1782-1852), kindergarten, social
development, cultivation of creativity, learning by
doing…women best suited to teach young children

17. Colonial Education
 Southern Colonies…in 1619, twelve years
after the founding of Jamestown, slaves
brought to the South for cheap labor…two
distinct classes of people emerged, a few
wealthy land owners and many poor workers,
mostly slaves…landowners hired tutors to
teach their children

18. Middle Colonies
 Various national and religious backgrounds,
so they did not agree on a common school
system…each established their own religious
schools, many received education through
apprenticeship

19. Northern Colonies
 Settled mainly by the Puritans
 People lived close to one another, shipping
ports established, industrial economy
developed
 Old Deluder Satan Act(1647)…required
towns to provide for the education of youth…
the Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647
became the model for other colonies

20. Types of Colonial Schools
 Dame schools, writing schools, charity
schools
 Colonial colleges: Harvard (1636), William
and Mary (1693), Yale (1701),
Princeton(1746), King’s College (1754),
College of Philadelphia (1755), Brown
(1764), Dartmouth (1769), Queens College
(1770)…heavy emphasis on theology and
the classics

21. Toward Universal Elementary
Education
 Monitorial schools (1805), in New York City,
economical way to teach the masses…one lead
teacher with lots of helpers among the older and
better students…closed by 1840 because seen as
not worth the cost
 Horace Mann (1796-1859), leading proponent of
common elementary schools, the forefather of the
contemporary public school
 Massachusetts in 1852 passed compulsory
attendance laws…by 1900, 32 other states did
likewise

22. Secondary Schools
 Latin Grammar Schools…strictly college preparatory,
must know Latin and Greek for college admittance
 American Academies… Benjamin Franklin in
Philadelphia among the first to prepare young men
for employment through practical studies…an also
enrolled women
 High Schools…replaced the academies, were
financially more in the reach of the masses

23. Federal Involvement in Education
 Northwest Ordinance (1785 and 1787) …
encouraged the establishment of schools, set
aside the sixteenth section of each township
to be used for educational purposes
 Morrill Land Grant (1862)…to provide the
vocational educated that was needed
 Smith-Hughes Act (1917)…high school
vocational education

24. Teaching Materials
 Hornbook
 New England Primer
 Blue-Backed Speller
 Slates
 McGuffey’s Reader