Benjamin Rush and Noah Webster on the Role of Schools in Society

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En provenance du cours de University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Negotiating Learner Differences: Towards Productive Diversity in Learning

notes

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Negotiating Learner Differences: Towards Productive Diversity in Learning

notes

An investigation of the dimensions of learner diversity: material (class, locale), corporeal (age, race, sex and sexuality, and physical and mental characteristics) and symbolic (culture, language, gender, family, affinity and persona). Examines social-cultural theories of difference, as well as considering alternative responses to these differences in educational settings - ranging from broad, institutional responses to specific pedagogical responses within classes of students. The course also focuses on the application of learning technologies and new media to meet the needs of diverse populations of learners. Its main practical question is, how do we use educational technologies to create learning environments in which learning experiences can be customized and calibrated to meet the precise needs of particular learners? Topics include: universal design for learning, differentiated instruction systems, and adaptive and personalized learning environments.

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Should Education be a Right?

In this module, we focus on the US case, first with an historical analysis of the emergence of public education, then with a case study of Asian Americans.

School in Colonial Virginia11:08

The School in Colonial Massachusetts4:54

The School in Colonial North and South Carolina10:26

Thomas Jefferson and Schools After the American Revolution15:18

Benjamin Rush and Noah Webster on the Role of Schools in Society4:39

First Federal Initiatives in Public Education4:00

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dr William Cope
Professor
Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, College of Education
Dr Mary Kalantzis
Professor
College of Education

Jefferson had contemporaries, still, who thought a great deal about education and

the role it should play as well in the early Republic.

For example, Benjamin Rush, a medical doctor provided not just

an essay on national system of education in the United States.

He also provided one that was different than Jefferson on

the thoughts of what role women should play in society.

And what type of education they should have.

And so in the minds of someone like Rush, he thought that,

by their very nature, schools could be a remedy for

a number of the concerns that we have in society and life.

And so it was here, and to use one of his quotes he says,

our schools are learning, by producing one general and

uniform system of education, will render the people more homogeneous.

And thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceful government.

And essentially, what he's saying is that schools in their very essence,

in their very nature,

can transform us from the diversity that we see into one commonality.

That we truly can become an American,

rather than see ourselves as some modification of something other.

His views on women as well differed from Jefferson.

He firmly thought women should be educated beyond just those three years of

schooling.

But he didn't disagree with Jefferson in a sense that women should be educated

much more so for the private sphere than for the public sphere.

He had his concept called Republican Motherhood and

he very much wanted women to fit within that mold.

So women should be good mothers to their children.

And they should be good wives to their husbands.

But it wasn't something that would be deemed respectable for

them to go out into the public sphere and do something for themselves.

On their own terms to become the kind of citizen, to become the kind of producer of

knowledge that they wanted to be in a society.

There are number of historians who have laid out discourse and

discussion and offered good conversation on Rush's views about women and

his thoughts on female education.

And I provided a short video clip by Carol Berkin who can add some

additional clarification on this matter.

The last major revolutionary figure that we'll talk about is Noah Webster,

who also gave considerable thought about the formation of the United States.

Most of us are aware of his Spelling Book.

Its first publication date is in 1783.

But yet, here we see an essay of his in 1790,

just 15 years literally roughly speaking, after the Declaration of Independence.

And just a handful of years after the drafting and

ratification of the Constitution.

Where he has an essay, On the Education of Youth in America.

And it's here that Webster articulates his own rationale for

what schools should be providing.

He wants us to have something that is distinct in language,

distinct in history, distinct in behavior.

And distinct in practice from anything that was ever espoused or

created in Europe.

So it was here that Webster wanted to establish a way that we can begin to use

schools to ensure that children would become both patriotic and

have a strong sense of nationalism.

So whether you were attending a school in Massachusetts or you were attending school

in South Carolina or any new territory that would become a state,

it's here that these individuals will learn from a common curriculum.

They will learn from a common structure to ensure that they would

become a common people.

In this case, Americans.

And so you see him push and prod for

this establishment of education in the United States.

He never reached a point of saying that

education should be a fundamental right in the United States.

Only Jefferson raised that point in consideration.

And he probably did it most outspokenly in his six angle address to

the nation, which we now call in our inaugural addresses, in 1806.

And it was here that Jefferson actually calls for

constitutional amendment to establish a national system of public education.

But Webster is a very close second in this regard of arguing the utility of

having a national system of education to ensure that we've

produced a kind of citizen needed for the nation to progress.

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