Even before schools existed, there was need for instructing youth in fundamental skills and approved beliefs, habits and customs. Through family, priests, clan or tribe, early peoples taught their young the skills of fighting enemies and getting food and shelter, and group traditions and religion.

As civilization developed, a more formal kind of education grew up. Much of the teaching in ancient Egypt, Babylon, and India was done by priests. Trades and crafts were taught by artisans.

Ancient Greek city-states wanted their youth trained to become good citizens, but formal schooling was restricted to those who belonged to the citizen class; it excluded peasants and slaves. Sparta trained both boys and girls, chiefly in athletics and citizenship. Athenian education placed emphasis on intellectual and artistic development Boys were taught in groups, girls mainly individually. Philosophers whose ideas on education are still studied were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates.

The early Romans made education a preparation for public service. Schooling was private, conducted largely by tutors (usually Greek slaves). Law and rhetoric were emphasized.

During the 6th to 12th centuries the chief educational institutions in most of western Europe were the monasteries and cathedral schools. About 780 A.D. Charlemagne, who himself was unable to read and write, set up his palace school under Alcuin, and gave grants for religious schools to be set up in his Frankish empire. During the 13th to 15th centuries, many universities were founded, the earliest at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford.

The learning of ancient Greece and Rome had been largely lost to western Europe in the early Christian Era, when schools were, closed and libraries destroyed as pagan institutions. However, much had been preserved in the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, which was conquered by the Muslims during the Middle Ages. Spain also fell under Muslim rule and was the gateway through which the teaching of early scholars was reintroduced into Christian Europe.

Education was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and emphasized preparation for religious professions. Consequently, very few persons outside the priesthood and religious orders could read or write. Latin was the language of instruction. Most young people received no education other than being taught a trade through the guilds' system of apprentice training.

By the mid-14th century, the Renaissance—a revival of learning—was emerging in western Europe. Important influences on education were the growth of trade and of cities and new interest in science, exploration, reason, and the Greek and Latin classics. Schools grew in number, but were still largely for children of the rich.

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries gave a new stimulus to learning. Education, said Martin Luther, must be made compulsory, so that all might learn to read the Bible. Schooling became a concern of Protestant churches. Dual school systems developed. Schools using the native language were for the elementary education of the common people. Latin schools were for the future leaders, who prepared for university by studying the classics, history, mathematics, grammar, rhetoric, logic, and music.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Michel de Montaigne (a Frenchman), John Comenius (a Czech), and John Locke (an Englishman) criticized the narrowness of education. They stressed realism and observation in teaching methods. In the 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau, of France, theorized that children learn best when left to follow their own interests. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, of Switzerland, advocated studying child psychology as a basis for good teaching.

1620-1776.

The early colonists varied widely from one region to another in the importance they placed on education. The first schools were organized informally, and although they might be “public”—that is, for any children rather than just those from one church, for example—they were rarely free. Tuition was required to pay the teacher's salary and any other expenses. In New England, however, free schools soon developed. They were usually maintained by a combination of public funds and gifts.

The Puritans, in Massachusetts, believed local government should see to it that all children learned to read the Bible. With the colonists grouped in towns or large settlements, it was easy to organize schools. (Each town consisted of a village and rural area of from 20 to 40 square miles [52 to 104 km2].) Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 provided that parents be responsible for having their children learn to read, and that every town of 50 families appoint a teacher of reading and writing.

There were various kinds of schools. In a dame school a woman taught the neighbors' children for a fee. In a town school, the teacher was hired by the community, parents paying tuition or a tax. The Latin grammar school taught boys Latin and Greek to prepare them for college (which did not admit girls). Harvard and eight other colleges—mainly for training clergymen—were founded before the Revolution. Boys of some wealthy families were sent to Europe for higher education.

Under Dutch rule, New York had free elementary town schools controlled by the church. These were followed, after the English took over New York, by charity schools for the poor, conducted by the Anglican Church. Children of parents with means went to private schools. Pennsylvania, with no single controlling church, had a variety of church and private schools. Private schools often took a few pupils on a charity basis. In northeastern Pennsylvania there were schools similar to New England's town schools.

After 1750, with the growth of commerce, private academies began to replace Latin schools. Some had special departments for girl students, and there were a few all-female academies. In addition to subjects taught in Latin schools, academies offered boys such practical subjects as navigation, surveying, and bookkeeping, and girls such social and domestic skills as music, dancing, and sewing.

In the South, the Anglican Church and aristocratic tradition were strong. Education became the duty of church and home rather than of government. Planters' children were taught in private schools or by tutors at home. Some of the poor and orphaned went to charity schools.

1776-1860.

The nation's founders believed everyone should have a good education, but they feared the tyranny of a central authority. For this reason they left control of schools to individual states, making no mention of education in the Constitution. In 1785 Congress passed an ordinance providing for distribution of public federal lands to encourage education.

Since many communities were isolated, the states left actual control of schools to local government units. As families moved into outlying parts of the Northern towns, many children lived too far from the town school to be able to attend it. In time, the towns were divided into districts, each district being responsible for a school supervised by a local committee. The one-room ungraded district school had pupils of every age, often under an untrained or poorly trained teacher.

In the early 1800's many states depended mainly on private schools for the well-to-do and charity schools for the poor. Many children attended neither. One attempt to solve the problem of how to pay for education was the organization of Lancasterian, or monitorial, schools in some cities. In such a school, 200 to 1,000 pupils assembled in a large hall under one teacher. The teacher taught only the brighter and older pupils, who then acted as monitors, each teaching a group of about 10 pupils while the one teacher supervised. The cost was said to be about one dollar per year per pupil. This method, first used in England, was developed by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster.

Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, and other educational reformers began insisting that in a democratic country everyone must be educated free. Reform and labor organizations tried to abolish child labor by proposing laws requiring children between certain ages to attend school. Massachusetts passed the first state compulsory school attendance law in 1852.

Growth in population, commerce, and industry led to greater demands on the schools. In 1821 Boston opened the first public high school; it was for boys only. A movement for high schools that gave general and commercial education as well as college preparation began to grow. The little red schoolhouse was becoming outmoded. As good roads were built, small district schools were replaced by consolidated schools organized on a township or county basis. Courses of study were expanded; better training of teachers was provided; state governments began setting standards for teachers, school buildings, and supplies.

Unlike the Latin grammar schools, some of the 19th-century academies enrolled girls. Boston had a girls' high school in 1826. Chicago started a coeducational high school in 1856. Oberlin College in the 1830's became the first degree-granting school in the nation to admit both men and women.

The Morrill Act (1862) allotted public lands for the establishment of state agricultural and technical colleges, which came to be called land-grant colleges. Many state universities got their start as land-grant institutions.

A number of 19th-century European thinkers influenced American education. In Germany, Johann Herbart showed how teacher training could be improved, and Friedrich Froebel started the kindergarten movement. In England, Herbert Spencer argued that the curriculum of the schools should include science and other material that would be of use in actual life.

1865-1945.

After the Civil War, the need for commercial and technical training increased. Education of former slaves, when undertaken at all, took place in schools inferior to those in which white children where taught.

Free high schools for boys and girls rapidly replaced private academies. By the early 1900's the junior high school and junior college movements were under way.

As the standard of living rose after 1900, more and more pupils, instead of leaving after the eighth grade, went into high school. Since many of them did not go on to college, new courses were introduced to meet purposes other than preparation for college. Secretarial and shop courses developed.

John Dewey and other educational philosophers developed new approaches to education. A movement developed to use scientific methods in studying educational E.L. Thorndike and others advanced the use of tests as an aid to better grouping of pupils and more accurate measurement of learning.

The Progressive Education Association, founded in 1919, was influenced by Dewey's philosophy. Progressives stressed children's interests and needs in developing curriculums and methods. Essentialists, more traditional, emphasized the importance of teaching basic subject matter. Critics of both groups argued for a balanced emphasis on both pupils and subject matter.

In 1917 the federal government extended aid for the first time to schools below the college level, to provide agricultural and vocational education. In the 1920's the junior high school system became widely accepted.

The depression of the 1930's severely harmed the American educational system. School construction was halted; teachers' salaries were drastically reduced; the constant shifting of population as people sought work was a disrupting influence. Curriculums and extracurricular activities were cut back. Then, with the return of prosperity during World War II, thousands of teachers left the profession for jobs in industry. No schools could be built because of military priorities. Public school systems in many areas fell far below their normal standards.

As population grew and transportation improved, many small, one-teacher schools were unified into larger, consolidated schools. Although some consolidation had gone on since the mid-19th century, only after World War II, when school buses became available for widespread use, could large numbers of rural schoolchildren be moved long distances to multiple-classroom buildings. The number of one-teacher schools declined from almost 200,000 after World War I to only about 600 in 1990.

Overcrowding of schools became acute in the postwar era. Schools were built throughout the United States, but in large cities, especially in low-income neighborhoods, facilities remained inadequate. Seeking higher wages and lighter classloads, teachers in urban areas began going out on strike, and the pay raises they won put an even greater strain on budgets that were already insufficient. Federal aid to education at all levels grew progressively larger.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brownv. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) held that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional and in 1955 ordered integration to proceed “with all deliberate speed.” Integration of the Southern schools was slow and, because of white resistance, difficult to achieve. In Northern cities the only means of achieving racial balance in many schools was by busing children to schools outside their neighborhoods. The issue of busing caused prolonged conflict in a number of communities.

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. This achievement sparked a renewed interest in science and mathematics education so that the United States could better compete in the “space race” with the Soviet Union.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided direct federal financial assistance to elementary and secondary schools. It provided funds to to improve education for low-income children and to build and improve school libraries. It also provided funds for educational research.

Meanwhile, the contrast between the quality of education in poor areas and in prosperous areas had led to serious criticism of local school revenues being based on property taxes. The alternative usually suggested was that public education be financed by the states and the federal government. In 1971 the Supreme Court of California ruled that local financing was unconstitutional because of the resulting disparity in educational expenditures. There were similar findings in several other states. Then in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court declared that local taxes could be used in part for funding schools, leaving the problem yet to be resolved.

In 1983 a government report, A Nation At Risk, identified a population of students as being “at risk” and exhorted states to raise educational standards. Many schools with low educational achievement had to contend with such problems as gang violence and drug use and were inadequately funded. By the early 1990's critics of public education considered it to be in a state of crisis. Dissatisfaction with the public education system contributed to an increase in charter schools through the 1990's.