Historical Context
Education has been around as long as humanity has, generations passing down information from generations to survive. Formal schools, however, began to show up during the nineteenth century. Schooling has definitely changed over the past 100 years, schooling was not how one would expect it to be with subjects such as math, reading, etc. Instead, it was primarily to Americanize immigrant children and prepare them for citizenship. The first recorded schoolhouses in Chicago on record were in the year 1830. Schoolhouses were held in small lodging houses divided by a curtain. On one side it had a small apartment, while the other side was used for the school. Each schoolhouse contained more than 100 children ranging for the ages 4-17. As you can imagine there was not much learning going on, due to the fact that the schools were so crowded. It was hard to hear anyone, and the children ranged in age. In 1837 Chicago schools received its charter, which states that schooling can take place in Chicago. Chicago schools then became official. As schools became part of Chicago life, they began to provide inspectors to evaluate what the schools actually provided. Although schools were now being funded by the city, the money was insufficient. Inspectors reported these school houses were crowded, foul-smelling, and poorly equipped. Although the enrollment of school houses began to increase, less than a fifth of the children in the city who were eligible for school were actually enrolled. This was for many reasons; one of the reasons being that most parents sent their children to private or church schools to avoid the inadequate resources in public school. Most of the other children were not in school at all. In 1854 Chicago’s first superintendent for public schools was appointed and went by the name John Dore. Dore and his partner William Wells really struggled to improve these schools without necessary funding. Their goals were to bring class sizes down by separating students by age, training teachers, and improving facilities. Dore and Well’s were able to get most of these by having class sizes drop below seventy because of the division of age, and desks began to replace benches, as well as establishing the first high school in Chicago. To oversee the increase of public education systems the mayor in 1872 created a board of education to oversee all aspects of the schools in the city. |
Between the 1870’s and the 1900’s schools once again began to overcrowd as education was seen by parents as more important. Class room sizes began to rise up again resulting teachers to be overwhelmed, and facilities were scarce. If a student was absent, that student would have to sit on a bench, upon returning, and wait until another student was absent to take his/her place. Schools used basements as classrooms, and school supplies were extremely limited. Because of this the board of education struggled with improving instruction and developing curriculum. One way the board did try to help the schools was to publish a manual in 1897, that advised these teachers on how to use different strategies to teach such as “slate work,” meaning book or paperwork, as well as “oral work.”
By the 1900’s there were more than five thousand, mostly young and unmarried female, teachers working for public schools in Chicago. In 1897 the CTF (Chicago Teacher Federation) was created to advocate for these teachers. Instructors wanted uniform pay scales, pensions, and better working conditions. The CTF became one of the most influential teacher organizations in the U.S. Most of the first public schools in Chicago centered the instruction on the “American life.” As immigration rates increased, many Americans believed that the school should teach “loyalty, love of the country, and devotion to American principles and institutions.” During the 1940s attendance for high schools and elementary schools became stable; however, the students still lacked interest and motivation. |