Schools and education, in general, enjoy a long, illustrious history in the United States and worldwide. However, education, as we know it, has evolved through leaps and bounds, from the days of word-of-mouth communication to the modern world filled with EdTech and digital instruction. This article looks at the history of schools and how things have changed over time.
Why Are Schools Important Today?
Most of us were told that education was the key to success. Schooling has become the norm these days, but only a few people stop to deliberate why going to school is so important to warrant the many policies and investment initiatives directed towards the education sector.
Generally, education can be defined as the process of teaching or learning to impart or gain deeper knowledge and understanding of various subjects that can be applied in daily life. However, understand that education goes beyond getting knowledge from books. It can take place outside the classroom through practical experiences. Either way, schooling offers ways of seeking, disseminating, sharing, and storing knowledge across generations.
Education is important as it provides a sense of stability and financial security. Your educational achievements can never be taken away from you. Furthermore, education improves your career prospects and earning potential. The more educated you are, your chances of getting lucrative career opportunities are higher. By shaping your earning potential, education also allows for some degree of independence. Given the importance of education, it is understandable that many students turn to websites like essaywriter.org for help with their assignments.
What Types of Education Are There?
It is important to reiterate that education can mean different things to different people worldwide. When some people think about education, they think of a system that involves classroom training and formal lectures. For others, education means all life-changing experiences that allow learning. There are three main types of education.
The most recognized is the formal variant that often occurs within school premises. Formal instruction refers to basic academic learning where students are taken through traditional teaching. In a formal schooling system, both the teacher and student know the facts of learning and engage based on prescribed rules and curricula. Read this essaywriter review to see how students turn to online platforms for help with assignments.
The second type is informal education which takes place outside the boundaries of the traditional classroom. This could be in the form of parents teaching their kids things unrelated to academics, like swimming or riding bikes. This form of education mostly takes place experientially.
There is also the non-formal type of education where people develop skills and acquire knowledge through a semi-structured approach, but without being confined to a classroom. Adult education and distance learning all fall in this category. Non-formal education is mostly preferred for its flexibility and range. Find out more information from this essaywriter review.
A Brief History of Education
The history of education predated writing when learning took place informally through word of mouth. In those early stages, knowledge was passed through songs and stories. Over the years, education became more formal, ushering in the onset of schooling. In the United States, large-scale schooling started in Massachusetts in the 1850s under the able leadership of Horace Mann. Mann is accredited with developing an organization of more than 1000 compulsory schools designed based on the Prussian system of common schools. After President Ulysses Grant fought to make public schooling a constitutional right, the spread of education spiked.
Notably, more than a quarter of children in the United States were not attending school in 1910. Mississippi became the last state to pass laws making public schooling universally available and compulsory in 1918. At the turn of the century, only about half of the children aged between 5 and 19 went to school in the United States. The number grew considerably by 1910, but non-white students were still not getting as much access as their Caucasian counterparts.
Since 1918, laws surrounding schooling have focused on universal access, including a growing feeling that students should not just have access to schools but should be able to get quality education. However, education has since evolved, thanks in part to technology, to a more inclusive and student-centered approach. Today, students must have equal opportunity to succeed in school, where they must be protected from discrimination and bullying.
A Summary
School and education have been around for a while, though standardized education is fairly new. It is important to note that modern education is much more than attending school and earning a degree. It entails the process of widening an individual’s skillset and knowledge base. This article summarizes the history of schooling and education’s role in modern society.
