Themes in American Education by Amanda Anderson

There are seven major themes in American educational history: local control, universal education, public education, comprehensive education, secular education, changing ideas of the basics and expanding definitions of educational access and equality. Like before, there are contemporary issues that come from these same basic themes.
Local control originated in New England during the colonial times, but spread in the 19th century creating the school district system. Currently, an issue with local control is the question “What should be the role of the federal government regarding education?” Universal education is the second theme. Education was originally for very few privileged children, white males. Later on in the 19th and 20th century, girls, minorities, immigrants, and disabled children were allowed into elementary and secondary education. This is very different than today where education is available to almost anyone. A question for universal education today is, “How can we ensure the quality of education regardless of whether students live in wealthy or poor district?”
In the Colonial period, there really wasn’t a whole lot of public education; it was more private and available for the middle to upper classes. It was in the early 20th century that when the idea of public education became common. For comprehensive education in early education the basics were all that were taught: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Those subjects were enough to prepare the students in adulthood; today classes have grown where we still learn those basics but there are more classes to prepare students for today’s adult world.
The reason for education in the early Colonial period was for religious purposes, to train students with a religious background. In the 18th century American education became more secular to manufacture more socially accountable citizens. Today religious studies stay mainly in the private schools. The sixth theme is changing ideas of the basics; education will have never ending change. Colonial education focused on literacy and classical learning, while practical skills were more important in the 19th century. With all the technology advances of today’s society, education has added studies in the sciences and computers. The last American educational theme is the idea of expanding definitions of educational access and equality. In earlier education the idea of educational access was to enroll as many students as possible by building schools in places where more children lived. Today, rather than focusing on the location of schools, we focus on equal access to poor students compared to wealthier students.