when did public schools start in the us
History of education in the United States The first American schools in the thirteen original colonies opened in the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States.[1] The first free taxpayer-supported public school in North America, the Mather School, was opened in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1639.[2][3] Cremin (1970) stresses that colonists tried at first to educate by the traditional English methods of family, church, community, and apprenticeship, with schools later becoming the key agent in "socialization." At first, the rudiments of literacy and arithmetic were taught inside the family, assuming the parents had those skills. Literacy rates were much higher in New England because much of the population had been deeply involved in the Protestant Reformation and learned to read in order to read the Scriptures. Literacy was much lower in the South, where the Anglican Church was the established church. Single working-class people formed a large part of the population in the early years, arriving as indentured servants. The planter class did not support public education but arranged for private tutors for their children, and sent some to England at appropriate ages for further education.
Progressive education In the United States the "Progressive Education Movement", starting in the 1880s and lasting for sixty years, helped boost American public schools from a budding idea to the regular norm. John Dewey, a principal figure in this movement from the 1880s to 1904, set the tone for educational philosophy as well as concrete school reforms. His thinking had been influenced by the ideas of FrÃ¶bel and Herbart.[7][8] His reactions to the prevailing theories and practices in education, corrections made to these philosophies, and recommendations to teachers and administrators to embrace "the new education", provide a vital account of the history of the development of educational thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dewey placed so-called pragmatism above moral absolutes and helped give rise to situational ethics.[1][9] Beginning in 1897 John Dewey published a summary of his theory on progressive education in School Journal. His theoretical standpoints are divided into five sections outlined below.