How is the history of education relevant to classroom teachers?

What schooling is like today is the result of what has happened in the past,and the past helps us see why things are as they are. Knowing what educators believed and did in the past offers insight into educational practices today. 

The invention of the blackboard over 200 hundred years ago remains to be the most influential technological innovation of our time. Teaching was a challenge for schools all across America before 1801 teachers and schools had no way to visually present lessons to a room full of students all at once, no means of presenting large concepts and historical over views for the entire class to view, grasp, and discuss.

What was it like to go to school in America before 1801....  

Eureka School House, Springfield, Vermont was in continuous use until 1900.

Education in colonial America was influenced by earlier settlers who came from Europe. Education in American colonies was very diverse often schools were open only a few months a year (when children were not needed on the farm). Teaching and learning consisted mainly of literacy, penmanship, arithmetic, and "good manners." Recitation, drilling, and oral quizzes at the end of each day was the norm in classrooms across America. Teachers rarely had enough time to teach more then three subjects in a day. The "three Rs" of early education were reading, "riting, and rithmetic."

A typical American one room school house

Was sparsely decorated and furnished having a wood stove to heat the school room and windows to let the breeze in during the hot summer months. School design was simple expressing the frugality of rural agriculture communities.Students were separated by grade level, sometimes with boys on one side and girls on the other.  


Supplies of pencils and paper were unheard of and to costly for families at this time.Having few resources to expand on education stone slate, slate pencil, and older students may have had quill pens to dip in ink making teaching a very difficult task. With no means of making mass copies, hand outs were a rarity since a teacher would have to hand write a set for each student. Students had hand held slates (horn book) shaped like a mirror and had attached to its frame a sheet of paper. Good behavior was a must as the teacher went from one student to the next copying the lesson on to each students slate.It was the responsibility of the teacher to punish children who misbehaved.

Teachers and Students

The first teachers did not have any special training, and students during the 1700 s and early 1800 s, typically only educated the children of those who could afford to pay. Leaving out children of the poor who could not pay. Joseph Lancaster (1753-1838) developed the monitorial system, offering the promise to educate all children regardless of finical means in a more cost efficient manner.