History of American Education

History of American Education

Nimiwari Ighofose

AED/201

April 16th, 2010.
Amber Wilton

History of American Education

The three major periods in the history of American education are:

    • The Colonial Period (1607-1775)

    • The Early National Period (1775-1820)

    • The Common School Movement (1820-1865)

The two major eras in the history of American education are:

    • The Progressive Era

    • The Modern Era

The table below lists events that stood out in each historical period or era.

|The Colonial Period                   | Massachusetts Bay Colony law requires proper teaching of children (1642)                               |
|The Early National Period             |Jefferson proposes establishment of common schools (1779)                                               |
|The Common School Movement           |Boston gets public high schools, which eventually replace Latin grammar schools and public academies     |
|                                     |(1821)                                                                                                   |
|The Progressive Era                   |Maria Montessori begins the early childhood movement (1907)                                             |
|The Modern Era                       |UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization is   founded (1945)             |

      Maria Montessori’s establishment of the early childhood movement in 1907 had a great effect on education systems for young children and the teacher education.   According to the International Montessori Index website (2010), she believed that children are born with “a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a ‘blank slate’ waiting to be written upon”. After becoming a physician in 1896, she turned her focus to children’s education.

      Her first work was with fifty children from a slum. These uncultured children would be a testament to her determination to show...