Education and Common Core Standards, #5

An early sod school

In the final blog in my Education series, I will take a brief look at the history of education in America, and the motivation for creating universal standards to encourage a comparable education level for all entering the work force or continuing their educations beyond high school.

Past blogs have considered the differences of country schools, with their shortened school year and  one-room structures, in contrast to the larger schools in towns with full school terms.  Educational opportunities for wealthy children, whether access to nicer schools and better trained teachers, or special tutors, was also significantly different from rural children's educational opportunities.

Donnelly's novel

One of the Populist books in the library of Isaac Beckley Werner was Caesar's Column, a novel written in 1890 by populist leader, Ignatius Loyola Donnelly, about an imagined world in 1988 in which the wealthy controlled America and workers were abused and debased.  It is a grim tale, ending in chaos, but a few characters escape to create a new society in Africa.  The narrator of the novel describes the universal and compulsory education system they created for their utopian world:  "No one can vote who does not read and write.  We believe that one man's ignorance should not countervail the just influence of another man's intelligence.  Ignorance is not only ruinous to the individual, but destructive to society.  It is an epidemic which scatters death everywhere.

Continuing:  We abolish all private schools, except the higher institutions and colleges.  We believe it to be essential to the peace and safety of the commonwealth that the children of all the people, rich and poor, should, during the period of growth, associate together.  In this way, race, sectarian and caste prejudices are obliterated, and the whole community grow up together as brethren.  Otherwise, in a generation or two, we shall have the people split up into hostile factions, fenced in by doctrinal bigotries, suspicious of one another, and antagonizing one another in politics, business and everything else.

Finally, the utopians did not forget the importance of morality and religion, so they limited school to five days a week, thus leaving one day for the parents or pastors to take charge of their religious training in addition to the care given them on Sundays.

This passage from Donnally's 1890 novel, written during the Populist Movement, reveals some of the issues regarding education that continue to be debated.

As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, settlers on the prairie were insistent upon building schools in their communities as soon as possible.  It was a goal that was established early in America.  The Mayflower arrived in 1620, and the first Latin Grammar school was established in Boston in 1635.  It was, however, designed for the sons of a social class destined to be leaders of America's churches, courts, and government.

The education of less financially privileged children was more likely to take place in churches or homes.  By 1647 a law was passed in Massachusetts that every town with 50 families was required to hire a schoolmaster to teach their children to read and write.   Massachusetts towns with 100 families were required to have a Latin Grammar school with a master able to educate students adequately to enter Harvard college.

The pattern of educating our children was established firmly in America, whether they were wealthy children or boys and girls helping their struggling parents establish a successful farm on the prairie.  The Common Core initiative is simply a continuation of that American desire to educate its children.

It is obvious to see from the brief summary of early education in Massachusetts that the mandated educations were not necessarily equal.  As the United States spread across the continent states established different standards for their students, and by the 1990s it was apparent that the quality of the educations children received were not necessarily of the same level.  The nation's governors and corporate leaders formed a bipartisan organization to "raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability in all 50 states."

In 2004 a report described that "current high-school exit expectations fall well short of employer and college demands."  In fact, the study concluded "While students and their parents may still believe that the diploma reflects adequate preparation for the intellectual demands of adult life, in reality it falls far short of this common-sense goal."  As a result, Common Core Standards were developed to help schools determine that their students are college and career ready when they graduate.

Lyn Fenwick speaking at MHS Graduation

The standards have drawn both support and criticism, ranging from disapproval of taking standards away from individual states to positive endorsements regarding higher graduation rates and increase in test scores.

In the fall of 2017 about 50.7 million students attended public elementary and secondary schools.  However, American students are also educated in private schools, charter schools, religious schools, and home schools.  Common Core Standards teaching materials can be purchased for students in learning environments other than public schools.  In our mobile society, where it is not uncommon for families with children to move across state boundaries, and where there are a variety of educational options, Common Core is one means for parents to evaluate the readiness of their children for entering the work force or college.

Things were certainly different for parents on the prairie.  Country schools would be open during months when children were not needed to help on the family farms, and students would be given a basic education.  There were no smart phones to distract them nor social media to occupy their time.  But after seeing the tests for 1895 8th grade graduates in the last four blogs, we know that school children were expected to learn a great deal!

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Back to School

The Emerson school Isaac helped build

Now that the school year 2015-2016 is back in session, I thought it was a good time to reflect on the earliest schools on the prairie, and the ideals for education of populist writers.

The standards for educating children have been a political issue since the founding of America.  Today's politicians debate Common Core, but the involvement of politics in education is not new.  Populist writers that Isaac read who expressed views on education included Edward Bellamy.  Looking Backward, set in an imaginary future, contrasted 'modern' educational practices with education in Isaac's time, focusing particularly on the importance of educating all citizens, not just a privileged few.  "...[W]e should not consider life worth living if we had to be surrounded by a population of ignorant, boorish, coarse, wholly uncultivated men and women...No single thing is so important to every man as to have for neighbors intelligent, companionable persons.  There is nothing, therefore, which the nation can do for him that will enhance so much his own happiness as to educate his neighbors.  When it fails to do so, the value of his own education to him is reduced by half, and many of the tastes he has cultivated are made positive sources of pain."  Bellamy's ideal emphasized the importance of universal education:  "To put the matter in a nutshell, there are three main grounds on which our educational system rests:  first, the right of every man to the completest education the nation can give him on his own account, as necessary to his enjoyment of himself; second, the right of his fellow citizens to have him educated, as necessary to their enjoyment of his society; third, the right of the unborn to be guaranteed an intelligent and refined parentage."

The 'new' Emerson School in about 1920

The Progressives of Isaac's era disapproved of segregating students into public and private schools.  In another novel written during that era, Caesar's Column:  A story of the Twentieth Century, by author Ignatius Donnelly, an imaginary future is again used to describe how past ills have been corrected.  "We decreed, next, universal and compulsory education.  No one can vote who cannot read and write.  We believe that one man's ignorance is not only ruinous to the individual, but destructive to society.  It is an epidemic which scatters death everywhere.  Continuing:  We abolish all private schools, except the higher institutions and colleges.  We believe it to be essential to the peace and safety of the commonwealth that the children of all the people, rich and poor, should, during the period of growth, associate together.  In this way, race, sectarian and caste prejudices are obliterated, and the whole community grow up together as brethren.  Otherwise, in a generation or two, we shall have the people split up into hostile factions, fenced in by doctrinal bigotries, suspicious of one another, and antagonizing one another in politics, business and everything else."

Douglas Township, Stafford Co, KS school about 1917

Isaac was a member of the Farmers' Alliance in his community, and he contributed books from his own library to the local organization. Isaac had more confidence in educating farmers than in political activities, although he did support the People's Party of the progressive era.  

In Isaac's time parents were eager to have a school nearby for their children to attend, unlike some of today's parents who make the choice to home school.  While most of the schools in Isaac's old region are public, in urban areas, private and charter schools are numerous.  How best to teach children, and what to include in the curriculum remain disputed issues.  The educational ideals envisioned by progressive authors of Isaac's time for the 20th Century have not been implemented.  (See "Once There was a Community," 3-5-2015 and "A One-room School House Surprise," 7-12-2012 in the blog archives.)

Everyone wants what is best for the children, but deciding what is best remains the subject of rancorous debate!

Isaac's Penmanship Revisited

Isaac's penmanship

It came as a surprise to me that my blog "Isaac's Penmanship" has proved to be one of the most often visited, even months after it was first published.  (See 5-2-2012)  I suspect its popularity may have to do with people searching for reference material to use in teaching themselves or younger people the art of cursive, now that many schools are abandoning classroom instruction. 

 

At the time I wrote the original blog, I knew that a movement to make the teaching of cursive optional was underway, and the May 2, 2012 blog discusses that movement and the pros and cons of teaching cursive as part of the standard curriculum.  As with other fading traditions, the disappearance of cursive has been so gradual that many people did not realize what was happening.  In a recent article by Julie Carr Smyth for the Associated Press, she wrote that the new Common Core educational standards have dropped penmanship classes, citing the state leaders who developed those standards as stressing "the increasing need for children in a digital-heavy age to master computer keyboarding."  An assistant professor of K-12 policy at the University of Southern California was quoted as saying, "...it's much more likely that keyboarding will help students succeed in careers and in school than it is that cursive will" 

 

According to Smyth's article, at least 7 states that have adopted Common Core have chosen to retain the teaching of cursive.  These advocates cite studies on brain science and the value to future scholars of knowing cursive to interpret a range of cultural materials, such as historical documents, ancestors' letters and journals, and handwritten notes by historical figures and scholars.  (See "Isaac's Penmanship" blog for additional discussion.)

 

Michael Sull

 

Consulting an old magazine article I had torn from the Nov/Dec 1996 issue of Country Home titled "Letter Perfect," I was reintroduced to a man known today as the leading authority on Spencerian script and as America's foremost living Spencerian penman.  In that article from nearly two decades ago, Michael Sull said of his decision to teach Spencerian script to others, "If I had taken this gift and decided to do nothing with it, I would have been falling down on some sort of moral responsibility.  I had a chance to preserve and extend part of our heritage. 

 

 Sull has indeed preserved and extended that heritage, as both the author of books and the calligrapher for Ronald Reagan after his Presidency.  The route Sull took to reach his esteemed position began with a degree in forestry from Syracuse University, followed by enlistment in the US Navy.  Only then did he pursue his interest in calligraphy, founding a calligraphy guild, working as a calligrapher and lettering artist at Hallmark, and starting his own ornamental penmanship company.  Like Isaac, Sull made his home in Kansas.  You can visit his face book page at Michael Sull or read more about him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sull where I found this recent photograph.

 

Of course, one of the reasons our ancestors polished their penmanship was to present themselves favorably in their letters, whether personal or business.  Author Simon Garfield, a British journalist, writes in his recent book, A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing, "A world without letters would surely be a world without oxygen," calling the distinction between an e-mail and a letter the difference between "a poke" and "a caress."  Yet, Garfield also predicts that the last letter will appear in our lifetimes.



Penmanship of beloved teacher Ralph Bisel

Recently, I bought several sheets of stamps, acknowledging to the postmistress that I had begun collecting as a way to share a common interest with my mother-in-law.  I admitted that with her passing, I should probably terminate my collecting, adding:  "I guess the stamps will always have the value of using them for postage."  The expression on the face of the much younger postmistress did not offer much assurance of the truth of my assumption. 

 



Penmanship of my parents from my grade card



Smyth's newspaper article cited USPS figures that 1st class mail fell in 2010 to its lowest level in a quarter-century, adding statistics that 95% of teens use the internet, with a rapidly growing number using their smart-phones to go online.  A 2012 Pew report found a rise among teenagers in text messaging from 50 a day in 2009 to 60 a day in 2011.   I would predict that the drift away from 1st class mail has only increased since those statistics were compiled.

Make your own generational handwriting comparisons, as I did with my parents and a special teacher, including the penmanship samples of yourself and your children.  What do you think you will find?  Will anyone write cursive as neatly as my teacher and parents did in the 1950s?

 

As you know from my earlier blog, Isaac continued to study Spencerian script as an adult, believing that proper penmanship was the sign of an educated man.  His neighbors respected Isaac's knowledge of contracts, grammar, and penmanship enough to turn to him frequently to write their agreements, and he was elected Secretary of most organizations he joined.  Has the time for such traditional skills passed?  Are we content with e-mails and text messages, or the occasional greeting card bearing only a signature? 



Here is a novel idea for your New Year's Resolution:  Consider digging to the bottom of that desk drawer for the old note cards you bought years ago or for the stationery someone gave you as a gift which you have never opened.  What a surprise for a close friend or special relative if you took the time to write a personal note wishing them a Happy New Year!  Or,...you could just forward them the link to this blog to say that you thought of them when you read my suggestion!   ;-)

New blogs will continue in 2014.  Until then, I hope the past year has brought you pleasures to savor and comfort for your sadness.  I hope you look forward to the New Year with eager anticipation, and may the coming months bring you joys you had not imagined!

Michael Sull's self-study penmanship workbook