Education And Egalitarianism In America Essays - Educational Stages

Education And Egalitarianism In America Essays - Educational Stages Education And Egalitarianism In America The American educator Horace Mann once said: As an apple is not in any proper sense an apple until it is ripe, so a human being is not in any proper sense a human being until he is educated. Education is the process through which people endeavor to pass along to their children their hard-won wisdom and their aspirations for a better world. This process begins shortly after birth, as parents seek to train the infant to behave as their culture demands. They soon, for instance, teach the child how to turn babbling sounds into language and, through example and precept, they try to instill in the child the attitudes, values, skills, and knowledge that will govern their offspring's behavior throughout later life. Schooling, or formal education, consists of experiences that are deliberately planned and utilized to help young people learn what adults consider important for them to know and to help teach them how they should respond to choices. This education has been influenced by three impo rtant parts of modern American society: wisdom of the heart, egalitarianism, and practicality... the greatest of these, practicality. In the absence of written records, no one can be sure what education man first provided for his children. Most anthropologists believe, though, that the educational practices of prehistoric times were probably like those of primitive tribes in the 20th century, such as the Australian aborigines and the Aleuts. Formal instruction was probably given just before the child's initiation into adulthood the puberty rite and involved tribal customs and beliefs too complicated to be learned by direct experience. Children learned most of the skills, duties, customs, and beliefs of the tribe through an informal apprenticeship by taking part in such adult activities as hunting, fishing, farming, toolmaking, and cooking. In such simple tribal societies, school was not a special place... it was life itself. However, the educational process has changed over the decades, and it now vaguely represents what it was in ancient times, or even in early American society. While the schools that the colonists established in the 17th century in the New England, Southern, and Middle colonies differed from one another, each reflected a concept of schooling that had been left behind in Europe. Most poor children learned through apprenticeship and had no formal schooling at all. Those who did go to elementary school were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Learning consisted of memorizing, which was stimulated by whipping. The first basic textbook, The New England Primer, was America's own contribution to education. Used from 1690 until the beginning of the 19th century, its purpose was to teach both religion and reading. The child learning the letter a, for example, also learned that In Adam's fall, We sinned all. As in Europe, then, the schools in the colonies were strongly influenced by religion. This was particularly true of the schools in the New England area, which had been settled by Puritans and other English religious dissenters. Like the Protestants of the Reformation, who established vernacular elementary schools in Germany in the 16th century, the Puritans sought to make education universal. They took the first steps toward government-supported universal education in the colonies. In 1642, Puritan Massachusetts passed a law requiring that every child be taught to read. And, in 1647, it passed the Old Deluder Satan Act, so named because its purpose was to defeat Satan's attempts to keep men, through an inability to read, from the knowledge of the Scriptures. The law required every town of 50 or more families to establish an elementary school and every town of 100 or more families to maintain a grammar school as well. Puritan or not, virtually all of the colonial schools had clear-cut moral purposes. Skills and knowledge were considered important to the degree that they served religious ends and, of course, trained the mind. We call it wisdom of the heart. These matters, by definition, are anything that the heart is convinced of... so thoroughly convinced that it over-powers the judgement of the mind. Early schools supplied the students with moral lessons, not just reading, writing and arithmetic. Obviously, the founders saw it necessary to apply these techniques, most likely feeling

3 More Misplaced Modifiers

3 More Misplaced Modifiers 3 More Misplaced Modifiers 3 More Misplaced Modifiers By Mark Nichol Additional information must be placed carefully in a sentence to ensure that it is associated with the correct part of the sentence. Here are three sentences with misplaced modifiers, plus discussions and revisions. 1. â€Å"John Smith was the school’s first Lombardi Award winner in 1979, given to college football’s best lineman.† This sentence implies that John Smith was the first of two or more teammates to win the Lombardi Award in 1979, and that 1979 was given to college football’s best lineman. However, the award is given to only one student-athlete each year, and â€Å"given to college football’s best lineman† modifies â€Å"Lombardi Award,† not 1979 (and not winner, so â€Å"in 1979† cannot be shifted to the end of the sentence without further modification of the sentence). This revision correctly places the modifying phrase and alters the verb phrase to allow â€Å"in 1979† to follow the parenthetical description of the award: â€Å"John Smith won USC’s first Lombardi Award, given to college football’s best lineman, in 1979.† 2. â€Å"The superintendent spoke about a Nazi-themed assignment given to students at a news conference.† According to this statement, the students were given the assignment at a news conference. To clarify that the assignment was discussed, not assigned, at the conference, the reference to the conference should begin the sentence: â€Å"At a news conference, the superintendent spoke about a Nazi-themed assignment given to students.† 3. â€Å"Hydrogen and oxygen do not need an enzyme to create water because of their perfect valence electron pairing.† The part of the sentence starting with because modifies the rest of the sentence. But the location of the modifying phrase sets up the possibility that the discussion will have a â€Å"not because [this], but because [that]† structure. For a clear reading of the sentence, start with the modifying phrase: â€Å"Because of their perfect valence electron pairing, hydrogen and oxygen do not need an enzyme to create water.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Yours faithfully or Yours sincerely?Five Spelling Rules for "Silent Final E"Rite, Write, Right, Wright