Unit Cycle 1 Blog Post

-->

The common problems or disagreements between scholars and citizens about public education as seen in this week’s readings are very similar to the debates about education today: the issue of religion in schools, class division, immigration, the role and evaluation of teachers and the role of education in general, were and are still hotly debated.   If you were to type “Issues in Education” into Google you would find numerous articles written about all of these topics and more.  As Reese explains, “to offer every child, at least every white child, a common experience at school would mean huge investments in buildings, textbooks, and teacher salaries.”  Arguably, pre-Civil War Americans were (at least initially) willing to make that investment, they recognized that their population was growing at a large pace and the young generation needed funding for public schools. To properly educate children, there is a necessity for well-maintained buildings, required supplies and competent well-trained teachers, all as parts to the functioning public educational system.  I feel that the mantra of “do more with less” has become the rallying cry of public education today.  Buildings that are beyond repair are continually used to house hundreds of students while they disintegrates around them, ancient textbooks and shortages of pencils and paper are abundant and of course the ever increasing class sizes.  This last problem I experienced myself this year, having a freshmen class of 36 with 30 desks and two students sitting at my own desk. 

The discussion about the role of education is but one of many common themes that can be linked from 19^th century educational debates and today.  What is the purpose of education?  Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that the, “aim of education was to make a life, not a living (Reese 2005).”  I would argue that in the roughly hundred and fifty years since, we are still having that debate.  We have focused more on higher education actually equating to a career, but many still look to educators to instill values in our students as well.  This, in some ways, is natural and happens through the learning process itself, questioning and debating, expecting common courtesy and teaching humanitarian values, and are modeled from the very curriculum and classroom standards that are commonplace in many modern day classrooms.  Depending on your meaning of the word ‘values’ it would be nearly impossible for a modern day (secular) educator to fully fulfill this role.  While the debate over the role of religion in schools is still alive and well, for the most part schools have succeeded in separating the most glaring parts of religious influence from public schools.  In direct opposition to some like Reverend Benjamin Peers who reasoned that, “education without religion, is education without virtue”.   

The largest parallel in the readings this week that stuck me was the overall attitudes of nativism and racism that permeated many of the sources.  An educator quoted by Reese stated that, “America like ancient Rome, might fall as a “vast horde” of newcomers arrived, modern day barbarians who were “the off-scourings of Europe”, the alumni of  “her alms-houses and prisons” (Reese, 52).  I don’t have to look far to see the outcry of the modern nativists blocking every chance that immigrants have of a prosperous life in the United States.  Take for example, Jose Antonio Vargas, born in the Philippines and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, he is undocumented and explains that he, “grew up here.  This is my home.  Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.”  To me that is a powerful statement.  What does an immigrant do to ‘earn’ their citizenship?  Does proper documentation make you an American?  Or do your attitudes and loyalties?  As I read the article that Vargas wrote about being an undocumented citizen in the U.S. today I was struck by how little our attitudes have changed as a society on immigration.  I am always amazed that skin color and ethnicity play such a big role is the qualification of ‘good immigrants’ and ‘bad immigrants’, the desirable and undesirable.  It bears comparison with previous laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or the Gentleman’s Agreement (Reese 2005).   For a country that is uniquely comprised of millions of immigrants, it is so reluctant to allow new ones to live here, much less educate them. 

Works Cited

Reese, W. J. (2006). America’s public schools: From the common schools to “No Child
Left Behind.” Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Vargas, Jose Antonio.  “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant”. New York Times Online.     June 22,2011.  <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/my-life-as-an-undocumented-immigrant.html?pagewanted=6&_r=1>