PBS Episode 1

The first part of this episode started with students reciting the pledge of allegiance. The longer I am involved in the education system, the more I wonder why we still have to stand up and pledge to the country. It’s mostly the part about God that really gets under my skin. For a country that isn’t supposed to have government involved with religion, we involve the two together at every corner. Anyway, education in its infancy was pretty interesting to say the least. They eliminated any books from Britain and focused on learning things about the United States.

Dame schools were one of the interesting things I found about this episode. A school for just girls where they learned how to behave like women. Men were the only ones to really receive any sort of education and African Americans either didn’t have an education or they had to risk a lot for some education.

Schools in the early days focused on memorization of spelling or passages in texts. It’s funny how this is the case because you still see that kind of thing today in schools. Back then, they didn’t have any clue about MI surveys and how each student learned differently. As the years have progressed, things have definitely gotten better. It’s more noticeably progressed in the last 20 years and before that you would still see remnants of the old ways. It’s unfortunate because even today you will still see older veteran teachers that stick to the way things used to be and don’t feel comfortable changing what they already know or they don’t agree with how things are progressing.