Archive for the 'Education' Category

The Revolution in American Higher Education

To produce the upheaval in the United States that changed and modernized the domain of higher education from the mid 1860’s to the mid 1880’s, three primary causes interacted. The emergence of a half dozen leaders in education provided the personal force that was needed. Moreover, an outcry for a fresher, more practical, and more [...]

Changing Roles of Public Education

One of the most important social developments that helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s on the schools. In the 1920’s, but especially in the Depression conditions of the 1930’s, the United States experienced a declining [...]

Children’s Numerical Skills

People appear to be born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably that it is easy to imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the table with impressive accuracy — one knife, one spoon, one [...]

Modern American Universities

Before the 1850’s, the United States had a number of small colleges, most of them dating from colonial days. They were small, church connected institutions whose primary concern was to shape the moral character of their students.
Throughout Europe, institutions of higher learning had developed, bearing the ancient name of university. In Germany a different kind [...]

Schooling and Education

It is commonly believed in the United States that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark is important.
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows [...]