How Did The Great Depression Affect Public Education
Public Education during the Great Depression
The Great Depression was a point in the History of the United States that caused enormous distress and economic depression. The citizens who lived through and experienced the devastation of this event suffered major changes to their day to day lives. The Great Depression didn’t just affect working people it also affected the students who were living with parents who were unemployed and it also affected the teachers that were in charge of educating the nation’s youth. Public Education was one of the issues that wasn’t often mentioned, but its effect put a great amount of burden on the students and teachers.
The economic side of the Great Depression didn’t start to effect public education, students, and teachers until a couple of years into the depression. Although the teachers didn’t lose their jobs, before the depression, they had a normal classroom size, regular school hours, and were making a decent amount of money for their salaries. During the depression the point of the era was to make cuts, because of these cuts schools hours decreased. Also, the cuts affected teacher’s salaries, even though they were now teaching a classroom close to triple …show more content…
The income source for U.S. public schools came from taxpayers paying their property taxes and since a lot of the parents couldn’t afford this expense, public education was almost not available. Alabama also struggled to pay their teachers on top of the people unable to pay their property taxes. “Only 16 of 116 Alabama school systems paid teachers in full in 1932. In Winston County, teachers went an entire year without pay”. 5 The teachers had to choose to either loss their jobs completely or take a cut in their pay. Eventually, an agreement was made which led to “teachers receiving part of their pay in cash and the remainder in vouchers”.5 These vouchers were able to be used at local stores in their
The Great Depression was a point in the History of the United States that caused enormous distress and economic depression. The citizens who lived through and experienced the devastation of this event suffered major changes to their day to day lives. The Great Depression didn’t just affect working people it also affected the students who were living with parents who were unemployed and it also affected the teachers that were in charge of educating the nation’s youth. Public Education was one of the issues that wasn’t often mentioned, but its effect put a great amount of burden on the students and teachers.
The economic side of the Great Depression didn’t start to effect public education, students, and teachers until a couple of years into the depression. Although the teachers didn’t lose their jobs, before the depression, they had a normal classroom size, regular school hours, and were making a decent amount of money for their salaries. During the depression the point of the era was to make cuts, because of these cuts schools hours decreased. Also, the cuts affected teacher’s salaries, even though they were now teaching a classroom close to triple …show more content…
The income source for U.S. public schools came from taxpayers paying their property taxes and since a lot of the parents couldn’t afford this expense, public education was almost not available. Alabama also struggled to pay their teachers on top of the people unable to pay their property taxes. “Only 16 of 116 Alabama school systems paid teachers in full in 1932. In Winston County, teachers went an entire year without pay”. 5 The teachers had to choose to either loss their jobs completely or take a cut in their pay. Eventually, an agreement was made which led to “teachers receiving part of their pay in cash and the remainder in vouchers”.5 These vouchers were able to be used at local stores in their