History

In colonial America education was limited largely to children of parents who could afford tutors or private school fees. Sometimes children of poor families were accepted in private, charitable, and religious schools. Dutch settlers in what is now New York opened a school in 1633. In 1642 the Puritans of Massachusetts passed a law making parents responsible for seeing that their children learned to read. Five years later a law provided that every town of 50 families should appoint a teacher of reading and writing.

One type of colonial school was the dame school. In her own home a woman would, for a small fee, teach the neighbors' children the alphabet, some spelling and reading, and a little religion. Some of the boys went on to the town school, where a man taught reading, writing, and some arithmetic. Some children were schooled at home by their parents, a practice that continues to this day on a small scale.

As population grew, towns were split up into districts, each with a district school. “Little red schoolhouses” flourished into the early 20th century. Typically, each had one room and one poorly trained teacher; the pupils were not grouped into grades. In the early 20th century the movement began to consolidate district schools into township or county graded schools.

In 1834 Pennsylvania adopted a system of tax-supported free elementary schools for all, and other states followed. Compulsory school attendance laws were passed. From 1865 to 1900 new subjects---science, geography, history, civics, and literature---were added to the “three R's” of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The 20th century brought a further broadening of the curriculum to include such subjects as music, art, and physical education. Elementary education was highly influenced by the American philosopher and educator John Dewey, the educator Francis Parker, and others. Their ideas formed the basis of the Progressive Education movement, which dominated American education from the 1920's through the 1940's. Among the movement's objectives was to reduce the amount of rote learning in favor of learning by practical experience based on the children's interests and needs. The field trip, which has become commonplace in most elementary schools, was a development of the Progressive movement.

Some Progressive approaches aroused considerable controversy, notably the replacement of the synthetic (intensive phonics) method of reading instruction with the analytic (look-and-say) method. After several decades of using the analytic method, most elementary school systems revised their reading curriculum to achieve a balanced approach combining phonics teaching with look-and-say instruction. (See Reading subtitle Beginning Reading Instruction: Methods and Approaches.)

Following the Progressive Education movement, elementary school systems continued to experiment with new approaches, including the grouping of pupils according to ability; the introduction of the New Math, an attempt to improve mathematical skills by emphasizing theory and logic; and the adopting of “open classrooms,” in which several classes would be taught with highly individualized instruction in one open space. Within a few years, however, most of these programs were modified or abandoned.

Beginning in the 1980's many schools introduced personal computers into the classroom, both for use as learning aids and as a means of teaching computer skills.