River of Words: For Educators

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From Socrates to Miss Crabtree: Teaching Through the Ages
by Pamela Michael

From the colonial days of America to the present, the conduct of school teachers has been expected to be-like Caesar's wife-" above reproach." To be sure, teachers need no longer fear losing their jobs if they marry or are caught lathered up in a barber shop, but the standard of behavior to which they are held is still of a higher order than that of most professions, with the exception of the clergy. And, like clergy, they are often required to work for low wages and to sacrifice many personal freedoms that the rest of the society takes for granted.

The reasons for the simultaneously elevated and discounted status of teachers can be found by taking a look back through the centuries at the history of teaching. In Europe and Asia, formal education (as opposed to familial or tribal training by elders) developed around 3000 B.C. as a means to teach the individuals how to read and write the newly developed written language. Temple priests or scribes in service to various kings were the first teachers. Much of education was religious in nature. By 400 B.C., the Golden Age of Greece, education was widespread and considered an essential cornerstone of citizenship. During this period, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle experimented with organizing knowledge so it could be better taught.

After Greece was conquered by Rome, learning and knowledge became a privilege of the elite. Most teachers were servants or slaves, and for the first time, teaching was considered an undesirable activity. Romans began state subsidy of education around 100 A.D.; prior to this, families had hired their own teachers, for the most part. Private schools quickly gave way to state schools, but when Emperor Justinian closed the state schools by edict in 529, Christian schools began appearing. Throughout the Dar Ages there was little teaching. The great masses of people received only rudimentary education at the hands of parish priests. Knowledge was preserved in isolated monasteries, copied and shared clandestinely.

A whole new group of teachers appeared during the Renaissance. The renewed desire for the Greek ideal of a well-rounded citizen demanded the development of a more humanistic approach to education, rather than learning through religious experience. The humanistic model exists to this day, particularly in the United States, which transplanted it full-blown from England. Indeed, due to colonization, the European model of education was spread through most of the world. The very notion of empire demanded an inescapable commitment to education due to the need to inculcate the discipline and loyalty necessary to maintain the colonial relationship. Thus, the English already had considerable experience with social and political uses of education by the time of the thirteen colonies.

During the 1600s, the New England colonists relied much more heavily upon their governments to provide schools than had been the case in England. Teachers were hired by town councils or clergy. Officials in the community assessed the would-be teachers' moral standing and monitored their behavior closely once they were hired. By contrast, performance was scrutinized much less stringently, generally by surprise school visits in which students would be asked to recite.

Most teachers did other kinds of work as well, out of necessity. Often, the town teacher served as assistant to the minister. Some teachers earned additional income by selling quill pens and crude writing ink. (Lucky indeed was the teacher allowed to charge for these items. Well into the 1800s, in the absence of pencils, teachers and older students spent an inordinate amount of time making and mending quills and compounding ink.) The colonial teacher's salary was usually in the form of beaver skins, wampum, corn or tobacco. Sometimes teachers were given a small plot of land to farm; many moved from family to family as boarders. The seeds of public education in America were sown immediately following the Revolutionary War. Men life Jefferson, Franklin and Washington repeatedly emphasized the importance of an educated electorate to the success of the new democracy. Lecturers were imported from abroad as interest in public education ran high. The Ordinance of 1785, acknowledging that private and religious schools could not provide a uniformly adequate education, mandated that each township set aside land for schools to be built. Town after town built schools and formed administrative bodies to hire and oversee teachers. The level of preparation for the profession was not high. In general, anyone who had been to school was eligible. Moral character and circumspect behavior were of greater interest to most school boards. Teachers were almost all men, with women, in the few instances where they were employed, assigned to younger children. By tradition, teaching had been considered a masculine task, which, coupled with the fact that women were uneducated as a class, tended to bar them from serious consideration for employment.

The 19th century marked a revolution in teaching - the concept of universal education was embraced and legislated. Schools were in place and staffed. Most, however, had no maps, slates, pencils, pens or globes. Classroom equipment and instructional devices were almost unknown to schoolmasters in 1800 - the blackboard, invented in 1809, was not in common use until 1820. But by 1830, the country had an organized system of state schools that were open to all, or almost all. For the first time, the education of girls was given official credence, although the education of Native Americans and slaves, while mandated in theory, was not part of public policy. The proliferation of public schools during this period increased the demand for teachers and opened the door a bit wider for women. Based on the assumption that females could not maintain discipline, the profession stayed all male until the mid-1800s, when dividing students into different grades allowed the older more obstreperous boys to be taught by men and the younger children to be taught by women.

The" feminization " of teaching advanced rapidly when schoolmasters returned from Civil War battlefields and found their positions occupied by females. Women had not only performed adequately in their absence, but at a much lower rate of pay (about 40-60% of men's salaries). For the first time, women teachers outnumbered men. Due to the historic disparity between men and women's salaries that exists to this day, the exodus of men from teaching accounts for salary rates being kept at a uniformly low rate of compensation. Wages are lower than they would have been had a larger proportion of males stayed in the profession.

Normal, or teacher training, schools were founded in great number after the Civil War to meet the increased demand for teachers. Most of these were absorbed into the state school system by the turn of the century. Teacher certification policies and regulations had varied from state to state and were confusing and often inadequate; the establishment of normal schools tended to raise standards and thus attract more qualified candidates.

Although schoolteaching is one of the few professions into which women made early inroads, the fact that school boards demanded unmarried women as teachers necessarily made teaching something of a temporary job on the road to matrimony for many. As late as the 1930s, 77% of school districts employed no married women as new teachers and 62% required teachers to resign if they married. (Moviegoers in the 1930s saw nothing unusual about Little Rascals' teacher Miss McGillicuddy who had to resign in order to get married.) Before World War I, teachers in many small communities dared not go to the theatre. Card playing and dancing were also forbidden. As late as 1929, a Kansas board of education fired eleven high school teachers for attending a local country club dance. The breakdown of social controls that followed both World Wars granted teachers a degree of freedom in their personal habits that formerly would have been decried.

Although far from adequate, the degree of support and respect accorded today's educators is an enormous improvement over the past. A teacher's private life has always been open to public scrutiny. Perhaps because a good portion of teaching consists of being a role model for students, teachers are often expected to adhere to the standards of the most pious members of a varied community, and are sometimes the targets of various pressure groups with a myriad of causes and restrictions to debate.

The twofold task of the teaching profession set forth by Willard Elsbree in his 1939 classic, The American Teacher, has changed little in fifty years: " First, to elevate the position of the American schoolteacher through high standards of training and scholarship and, second, to educate the public with respect to the importance of freedom in teaching." Only if teachers are allowed to lead free and normal lives will individuals who value freedom - and who are able to teach a love of freedom - stay in the teaching profession.

Rules for Teachers: 1872

Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.
Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day's session.
Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week of they go to church regularly.
After ten hours on school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the bible or other good books.
Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

Important Dates in U.S. Education

1635 The Boston Latin School, the first secondary school in the American Colonies, began classes.

1636 Massachusetts chartered Harvard College, the first college in the American Colonies.

1642 Massachusetts passed an education law requiring parents to teach their children to read.

1647 Massachusetts became the first American colony to require establishment of public elementary and secondary schools.

1785 Georgia chartered the first state university.

1795 The University of North Carolina became the first state university to hold classes.

1819 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot take over a private college without its permission

1833 Oberlin Collegiate Institute (now Oberlin College) became the first coeducational college in the United States.

1852 Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school-attendance law in the United States.

1862 The Morrill Act gave federal land to support state agricultural and technical colleges.

1874 The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that taxes could be collected to support public high schools.

1901 Joliet Junior College, the nation's oldest junior college, opened in Joliet, IL.

1917 Congress passed the Smith-Hughes Act, the first act to provide federal funds for vocational education below the college level.

1944 Congress passed the first GI Bill, granting funds to veterans to continue their education.

1954 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools segregated by race are unequal and therefore unconstitutional.

1965 Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to aid local schools and to improve the education of children from low-income families.

1972 Congress passed the Education Amendments Act, which grants funds to almost every institution of higher learning to use as it wishes.

1978 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that college and university admission programs may not use specific quotas to achieve racial balance. But they may give special consideration to members of minority groups.

1979 Congress established the U.S. Department of Education.

1983 The National Commission on Excellence in Education reported in A Nation at Risk that U.S. students lagged far behind students in other industrialized nations.

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