As American As Public School 1900-1950

I really enjoyed the discussion I had with my group members during the last class. We were given the task to go around in a circle and each talk for a minute and point out things we found interesting in the education system in the 1900s-1950s. During this time there were high numbers of immigrants entering the United States, one part that stood out to me from the article was “some leaders welcomed new workers because the aid was needed  while others believed that the immigrants would degrade the American language, politics and culture”. It’s crazy how being accepted was more of a privilege rather an a right for many of them. It even got so bad to the point where there were laws set in place to ban mass immigration and groups like the KKK believed that nothing could make someone of another race American. The judgement was something they couldn’t escape.

During this time period tests were put in place to determine children's future. Based on their scores some students were put in classes that were tailored to higher professions while others were taught to be industrial and commercial workers, domestic workers and housewives. This system mostly affected immigrants who were still learning English, they would do very poor on the tests and their career were basically decided by this. Due to this testing system many children didn’t even attend school and over 80 percent preferred to work. This says a lot about the schools during this time period the conditions really must have been terrible, today it’s the opposite children are usually excited to go to school and see there teachers and friends. Work is not even on their minds.

I could just imagine how hard it must have been for a child who barely spoke English to be given a test written in English and be expected to do well. Even I someone who speaks English had a hard time grasping onto some of the ideas of these standardized tests that was used to determine my college acceptances and scholarship opportunities. Today,although, many higher institutions look for qualified candidates, sometimes other areas other than academic work can get someone great opportunities. To be judged so vigorously starting at the age of 5 was really unfair to the children during that time period especially because their careers was chosen based on their scores.

I’m happy that today there are many paths that people can take based on where they feel they want to go in life after their early education. However, it does suck that nowadays without college which is an expensive investment, there are limited career options, which draws huge financial gaps between people. Seeing what people had to go through in the earlier years it’s important to take advantage of the better systems that we do have today.