Historical Context The 19th century was the time when schooling and education systems really began to evolve, although there was always generations passing information down to generations. However In the 19th century, the educational value was not given for traditional education that we’re all used to today, but valued the idea of Americanizing immigrants and foreign children to prepare them for citizenship. In 1830 the first schoolhouse was established. This seems like a big deal, and a big issue but the truth of the matter is, it was a really bad setting with little learning going on. The class sizes consisted of 100 students or more with a mixture of toddlers and teenagers, through the ages of 4-17. The schoolhouse was used for multiple services that consisted of being separated into two parts, for the school and an apartment. As you may infer the school was extremely cramped as well as having little to no space for the students to work in. The teacher did not teach much due to all the different age groups and not being able to hear each other. The year 1837 was the year that these schoolhouses received its official title to be a system under the city of Chicago, thus the beginning of CPS. |
By the 1850's public schools were not in good shape with enrolled children. Less than a fifth of children that lived in the city and were eligible were enrolled in Chicago schools. Also from the beginning of standard education in Chicago Public Schools, it was considered unproperly managed because of horrible maintained classrooms, inadequate materials and large classrooms sizes that led to teachers having little or no control to run the classroom. This led cities council to appoint John Dore as their first superintendent to try and keep things under control. He and his partner William Wells struggled to change and create a better public school system by working towards better teachers, the change of classroom size as well as diversifying by age difference.Because of the progress made, in 1872 the mayor appointed members and created a board of education to oversee all aspects of public schools in the city. However because of population increase in the city, the schools began to overcrowd once again. In 1879 the board members published a manual that was published to aid these teachers into different teaching strategies for different situations. During the 1900’s Chicago public schools gained more than 5,000 teachers. The Chicago Teachers Federation was created to advocate for these young teachers, which became one of the most influential teacher organizations in the US. The public schools in the US were all about the “American Life.” As Immigration began to rise, many american's believed that the teachers should teach loyalty, love of the country as well as their personal devotions to american institutions and principals. In the 1940’s students lacked motivation and interest in school although attendance was stable.
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