The Centralization Of Education

When I started my teaching career in 1830, I envisioned one day that the United States would reach an education reform that would help students of all races and different social classes gain an education. In 1830, I taught at a schoolhouse in New Hampshire. The people of New Hampshire would tax themselves to raise enough money for the districts to afford teachers. Teachers were put up for auction or boarded with the lowest bidder. Luckily, New Hampshire chose me to work at one of their schoolhouses. Students in my first couple years of teaching were mostly white children of all ages from the New Hampshire district. But as my career progressed, more immigrants students would enter the American Education system. In the 1840s, over a million of
Since teachers were scarce, this made made my job much more difficult. Class sizes became bigger and it was harder to control and teach these bigger classrooms. I also had to change my teaching style from using the bible and having students memozise and recite, to using other literary works and more complex ways to educate, such as arithmetic skills . More pressure began to fall on me to become a better teacher. Classrooms were starting to move away from having a mix of all ages, to having specific levels of schooling. I attended normal school to learn more effective ways to educate my students in common schools. Since American settlers started moving West, we started to take land for the Native Americans. Common schools were created to teach all children, regardless of social class or their religion. However, Native American and African American children were not given equal education. Centralized education had a big effect on my students who were the children of immigrants. In 1851, the State of Massachusetts passes its first compulsory school which was aimed to make children of poor immigrants more “civilized”. In these compulsory schools, students were taught how to be obedient and good workers so they would become more civilized and educated members of society. In 1860, Congress made it illegal for Native Americans to be taught their native languages. Native American children as early as four years old were taken from their parents and put into boarding schools. Centralized education had the biggest effect on Native Americans. “Kill the Indian, save the man” was a catch phrase said by Richard Pratt in the response to the Education of Native Americans. Native American children were tripped of their cultral identity within these schools. As Rury states, “The story of Native Americans education in the 19th century involved a deliberate crusade to fundamentally