America 1870-1900 - EDUCATION- The Ladder of Learning

[Wherein I get off track an awful lot, but manage to come back again and again to the topic of...]

EDUCATION! How very timely! Everyone in America is currently an expert on this subject of education. I think most of the ennui I have been feeling the past few days is because of the uncertainty about schools reopening. Once we know what we are in for, it will be less stressful. My line is that I am a team player and I have had a good run. If my school opens up, I will be there doing my job in a hazmat suit and if I die, all that I demand is that every person I know who has talked about the “Plandemic” be forced to kiss me on the lips before I go! With tongue, of course.  

But back to Time Life.  The classroom pictured in the double spread is integrated! There are a handful of black kids sprinkled among the majority white kids. Four out of twenty-four is the ratio. And the male female ratio is not too bad - ten girls and fourteen boys. It is a grade school classroom in Valley Falls, Kansas. The picture is from the Kansas State Historical Society out of Topeka. 

THE LADDER OF LEARNING

Andrew Carnegie, among other things, was a fan of education. He would have loved Joe Willard! One in 400 Americans had a college degree in 1900. Four out of four people who live in my house have a college degree. Call it lucky, call it blessed, but I get to ride the tail of the greatest era in US history for middle class white ladies. The early feminists tossed me a soft ball with regard to access to access. I didn’t have to fight for my rights, they were given to me. Not in every aspect of life, but as far as voting, owning property and birth control. 

The divisiveness in this country is straight up to do with manipulation. With a divided population, people in power can get away with a lot. And sadly, much of that division is educational. Our president says, “I love an ignorant voting block.” Of course you do sir, of course you do. 

Carnegie is described as a "plutocrat" - a person whose power is derived by their wealth.  Let me think if I can find any examples of plutocrats in our current society. Hmmm...

Time Life talks about the strictness of 19th century education. By 1898 most children were getting some kind of schooling. I think about Richard Peck’s books and how 1910-1940s classrooms were described. Heck, Laura Ingalls at 15 years old taught on the prairie. Things were surely different!

ARGH! They have a quote from “one educator” and in attempting to google it on my phone I got a lot of very depressing stories of today’s educational disparity. When I did a search for the exact quote - "the high school is the institution which shall level the distinction between the rich and the poor" - I was surprised that two fairly reputable books seemed to be basically plagiarizing this section for This Fabulous Century! And also, wow, schools are not equal. No they are not.

Beverly’s schools are great, lack of elementary librarians notwithstanding. There is a history of high schools being disrespected in Beverly. The first high school was going to be built out in the boonies so that only kids with the means to get there would be able to attend. Those would be the kids of the immigrants who lived downtown and worked at the Shoe. But eventually smarter and more just heads prevailed. You can check out The Origins of Public High Schools : a Reexamination of the Beverly High School Controversy by Maris A. Vinovskis if you are curious about our local history.

Back to Time Life - The US went from having 500 high schools in 1870 (the year my house was built!) to 6000 in 1900. And colleges boomed too. It appears that Carnegie believed that the hope of a college education was a great motivator. He come up from nothing as an immigrant from Scotland, I think, but he did some dirty dealings to get ahead. I really should investigate further before shooting off my mouth. 

Funny, just today I was saying that I still have hope for capitalism. I was so sure I was a socialist. Funny how to conservatives I appear to be a dyed in the wool liberal, but to the far left I am a capitalist pawn. This is where I step off. I refuse to define myself as liberal. Yes, I support liberal causes and I vote for mostly liberal candidates. 

But I AM a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an educator, a librarian, a reader, a singer and the only two time winner of the Beverly High School Dancing with the Teachers Contest. Those are what I am, but my politics are what I think. Some people really are their politics. And in the past that has been what has made them heroes or villains. Except for in times of national unity, most people were in their bubble and stayed there. But those bubbles were mostly economic, religious, racial and fairly stagnant. Now with the information available to spiral into the virtual echo chamber that tells you that you are RIGHT and everyone else is wrong people are defining themselves by what they think rather than what they do and it is so very, very dangerous. 

Was the Vietnam era this bad with regard to unity? What saved us was the press. But the current people in power are hellbent on splintering that too. And MSNBC and Fox are just two sides of the same coin - hellbent on stirring the pot for revenue. Could it be that USA TODAY might save us? That feels like putting my faith in Time Life to give me an accurate portrayal of American history. I must take this time to once again preach the wonder that is All Sides. For the love of America - go take a look. 

Wow, I have gotten WAY off track!

Johns Hopkins, Ezra Cornell, Leland Stanford, and John D. Rockefeller all endowed colleges. Rockefeller didn’t want his named after him so it is the University of Chicago. And it started out as a Baptist school. Who knew??

“For Victorian children grade school was a robot parade ground for the mind.” Ha! Well, the folks at Time Life wrote this when I was in a “pod” at my suburban Cleveland area elementary school and I was in the “Independence” reading group so I never learned ITA. I did, however, get to read SRA cards. All of them!

There are some pictures in the next few pages that deal with desk position and handwriting.  There is a chart of food related arithmetic that reminds me that it is almost time for dinner!

They quote an “Educational Axiom in the Training of Children - It is better to do one thing 100 times than to do 100 things one time.” It almost seems like they are trying to educate a complacent work force. Holy cow, no wonder we are always being accused of “indoctrinating” students. We 100% teach the opposite. We have to! Computers can do 100 things a second. We need kids who can think, figure, extrapolate, collaborate - all the things a computer can’t do. The internet does all our remembering now, freeing us up to concentrate on the creative aspects of educating. If only everyone had the same quality of education, that would be swell. 

There is a pictorial alphabet, a McGuffy reader, and a lovely map from Swinton’s A Complete Course in Geography. There is also a delightful elocution series of specific poses for acting out specific phrases. I just acted them out and now agree with Mark Twain who described them as “the painfully exact and spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used.” Oh machines, you have ruined everything, even elocution. 

There is a Declaration of Independence lesson and a song and a “Testimonial of Merit” for punctuality, deportment and diligent attention to study from Litchfield New York in 1888. I wonder if there are similar things in my educational archive. Well, not MY educational archive, but the one housed at my library. Well, not MY library. Hmmmm… I do seem to believe things belong to me, don’t I?

There are some little white Iowans celebrating the last day of school. My beloved Aunt Ginger, who lives in a very high tourist area, says that Iowa stands for “idiots out walking around” which seems kind of mean, but also very funny. 

The last section in education is a love letter to Cornell that I had declared I would read but not take notes on as the only thing I know about Cornell is that it is Andy Bernard’s alma mater and it was the only Ivy I realistically thought I could get into. Not that I applied, I just assumed. I guess we will never know. 

So that is what I said, but then I started reading and of course made notes, because how could I not?

So Cornell went co-ed in 1872 and it is wonderful to see women in the laboratory and the library just owning their places. But then came the fraternities. Oh well…

Freshman crew, varsity crew and women’s crew are all shown. They are a hearty bunch and I assume there are some Boston Aunties among the ladies. One of the girls in the second row is smiling awfully sweetly as if she has a secret love! One can hope. And the women’s team had their own boathouse by 1896. Go Cornell!

The final picture is the football team and I’m not going to lie. They are a pretty bunch. They look to a man like they could be fronting an indie band in 2014. 

Next up - THE PRESS! Bwahahaha… I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. If Time Life didn’t want me getting all navel-gaze-y it shouldn’t have been reading this morning’s New York Times over my shoulder and picking its content from there. 

All photos are public domain or from TL unless otherwise noted. All quotes are from TL.

"Beverly High School" Beverly Library,  June 2, 2002

The Office. Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2006

Stamberg, Susan. "How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fortune Into A Library Legacy." NPR: Morning Edition, August 1, 2013.