EDF1005-Reflection #19

The children were being taught in their homes with the most important subject being reading. The homes were converted into schools which were called “dame schools”. They taught everything within English and grammar which was writing, computation, and reading skills. It was known to be that “dames” were women who were interested in education and they were the ones who took charge of the education in the communities. In the early 1900s junior high schools included 7, 8, and 9 grades and were made to satisfy and provide for the preteens. It offered a core curriculum as well as the counseling they needed. Later on, they developed all the other grades into another school and incorporated more into the high school. Boys were sent at the age of seven to learn the different trades while girls usually stayed at home with their mothers to learn homemaking skills and to learn things that a house wife should know. All these were the apprenticeship programs, some laws also required for certain areas to learn reading and writing skills. The boys who were able to pay for their education attended a school called Latin grammar school which was an exclusive school that you had to pay for your tuition just to receive an education. It is said that this was the beginning stepping stone to creating the American high school. Here, the students needed to recite and read different poems and stories. They also included all the other important subjects. Once they graduated they were expected to attend college and most of them became ministers. But, high schools were free unlike these grammar schools. They weren’t controlled by private boards, instead by the public. High school is something we hold within us forever. It is something we don’t forget, for some of us the best four years of our lives. Those are memories we cannot escape. Colonial schools were also surrounded by religion, and the high schools kind of began to move away from that. There were a couple of changes with the dame schools and the development of the high schools for adolescents. It all came together over time, and now we have elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools to follow.