20th Century Public Education

Anyway, I am very interested in your "memory work." Along with the explanation of classical ed -v- 20th century.

Kristi-but-not-me imbedded this sentence in one of her comments many posts below. Little did she know how I have become obsessed with the topic of 20th century public schools and that I would devote an entire post on why the schools are going to Hell in a handbasket. Little did she know, indeed. After this post you'll be wondering if I really am Kristi-but-not-me posing fake questions in my own comments in order to bring up my pet subjects. In my own blog. Yeah...nevermind. That would just be pathetic.

This is What Happened and I Dare You to Prove I'm Lying

That's the title I use when I give a history of public education without any sources or backup. I feel like Dr. Madden is going to give me an 'F' for not citing my footnotes correctly. I love blogs.

Way back in the olden days, the education of children was left to the discretion of their parents. Most parents taught their kids to read and do math, as their parents had taught them, but many did not send their kids to school since the rural economy demanded more labor. Makes sense, right? You'd think that we'd have a lot of illiterate farm kids running amok. Not so. Prior to government enforced compulsary education, literacy rates were higher than they have ever been since. In other words, parents, who have the greatest vested interest in the education of their children, were somehow doing a better job than the institutions that were created for that purpose.

But I digress. So somewhere in the 19th century the good folks in Washington decided education should be free (sorta) to everyone and all the youngins are compelled to go to the little red schoolhouse. Still, things were good. Because back in the old days everyone more or less followed an education pattern known as the Trivium. I encourage you to take a look at the Wikipedia article for a thorough explanation of what the Trivium entails. A very simple but effective pattern is followed with this method of education. During the elementary years the child is crammed with so much knowledge they are just oozing ridiculous amounts of information. Then, during the jr. high-ish years you cut back on filling their heads and try to get them to begin to apply their knowledge. This is called the logic stage. This is when you attempt to get them to see relationships and give analysis. Finally, in highschool students completed the rhetoric stage. At this point they are learning to articulate and defend positions...they are debating. They should be able to pierce through flawed loging like a hot knife through butter.

And then everything changed. In the early 20th century the field of "child development" was just maturing as a branch of psychology. Guys like Piaget and Dewey started hinting that academics wasn't nearly as important as emotional well-being. Progressive educators began hinting that newly enfranchised blacks and immigrants wouldn't be able to handle Latin and Shakespeare. So we needed to re-shape our high schools to give our non-white citizens the skills they need to enter the workforce. There is a section in To Kill a Mockingbird in which Scout complains that all they ever do at school is create stuff with construction paper. Her teacher won't even let her read. Progressive education in a nutshell.

By the 1950s people like Dorothy Sayers begin suggesting our education system is heading for a crash. She predicts that the only reason Americans were still competitive was because of the influence of classically educated parents and grandparents...once they're gone American schools will no longer be producing the brightest students in the world. And as if God himself had appointed Miss Dorothy as some sort of educational Isaiah, SAT scores started plummeting. That was in the 60s.

By the 70s people like Marva Collins and Jessie Wise had the courage to stop playing the public school game and get out. And millions and millions of others have followed along.

Thanks, Kristi-but-not-me for the encouragement to write the thesis I always wanted to write.

More supergood questions from Kristi-but-not-me.

My question is when do you decide one of your kids has actually memorized a poem/etc? Do they have to recite it more than once? Will your son have to recite all his first grade memory work this year to see if he retained it? Do you care if it is retained from year to year? Does he retain stuff he has not accessed for several months?

This is new ground for us so we're making it up as we go along. A piece is "memorized" when he can recite it unassisted. We've started the 2nd grade with with a new memory work folder and the second side of his blank tape. I imagine I'll whip out the old folder and ask him to recite the 1st grade poems every now and then to keep them in his head. But he no longer puts any school time into those pieces.

Short and sweet. Just like me.

Whooaaa Nellie... I missed some questions down there.

I forgot about my homeschool page for a few weeks. Thus I missed the questions posed in the comments from my last post. As a self-appointed homeschool evangelist, I mustn't let good questions go unanswered. Let me know if I don't exactly address what you were looking for. Or if you come up with something altogether new.

Here we go.

The lovely monikered Kristi-but-not-me says:

I often find myself rejecting straight memorization as not functional. As in, why make a child memorize the introduction to the Declaration of Independence (I sub and this was something the 5th graders were doing) when they will most likely not use that knowledge in the future.

In other words, what's the point? Proponants of classical education contend memory work is important for a number of reasons. I'm just going to go over a few.

Memory work develops the capacity to memorize, which is useful in all academic settings. Memorization takes practice and discipline. A child who has been memorizing their whole lives will be better equipped at retention as adolescents and college students. So the actual act of memorization is like brain-exercise.

Memory work introduces children to a rich and complex world of language that they would not be getting otherwise. Beautifully metered poetry exposes kids to rhythm and cadence and a million other things that they don't get in our crazy paced world. From the process of reciting poetry they hear how language and syntax work...this is absolutely critical in the development of writing skills.

Beyond the skills acquired from using memory work in a curriculum, the memory work itself is worth the effort. Charlie is working on Casey at the Bat right now. He picked the poem because he loved, loved, loved the story it was telling. Memorizing literature and important speeches or documents may not have future utility in the sense that a particular skill set has use. If your toilet is backed up you need a plumber, not freakin' Abe Lincoln with his Gettysburg Address. On the other hand, most people taking the time to read this far into this post is very, very, very interested in raising well-rounded kids with as strong an academic background as you can muster. So why not challenge them? See how far they can go. I'd memorize the Gettysburg address right now because it was important and it's beautifully written. And if no one is memorizing the Gettysburg address, how long will it be before we forgot it ever happened?
If we don't teach the little ones Latin or ancient history, will anyone care enough to teach it 100 years from now? Crazy people like me think about these things.


I thought I'd take care of all the questions in one post. But I can't. Stay tuned.