Education Topics: History of Education

American educator and mathematician, b. Sheffield, Mass. During his long administration (1864–89), Columbia grew from a small undergraduate college of 150 students into one of the nation's great universities, with an enrollment of 1,500.

Educator and writer, born in East Hampton, New York, USA. After her fiance’s death (1823), she founded the Hartford Female Seminary, launching a life-long campaign as lecturer, writer, and advocate for women’s education.

Dewey’s belief that the method of enquiry, the scientific method, should be applied to practical problems lent philosophical support to the rise and the vogue of the social sciences.

American educator and president of Harvard, b. Boston, grad. Harvard, 1853. Under Eliot's 40-year administration, Harvard developed from a small college with attached professional schools into a great modern university.

From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
(1921-1997) radical educationalist. His best known work Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated into English in 1972. Freire used learning to facilitate the development of consciousness amongst oppressed and marginalised groups.

German educator and founder of the kindergarten system. Froebel stressed the importance of pleasant surroundings, self-activity, and physical training in child development.

From The Dictionary of Alternatives
A radical educationalist and social thinker. His first and most famous book, Deschooling Society (1971), argued for the replacement of prison-like institutions for education by lifelong learning webs.

American educator. Was made secretary of the newly created (1837) state board of education at a time when the public school system was in very bad condition.

Maria Montessori was a physician, an educational reformer, and an advocate for children and peace. She is best known for designing the educational system known as the Montessori Method, which flourishes today in more than 8,000 schools on five continents.

Although Piaget is internationally known for his work in child psychology, he regarded his work as a contribution to genetic epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge directed upon the development (genesis) of knowledge.

Swiss-French philosopher, author, political theorist, and composer. What was new and important about his educational philosophy, as outlined in Émile, was its rejection of the traditional ideal: education was not seen to be the imparting of all things to be known to the uncouth child; rather it was seen as the "drawing out" of what is already there, the fostering of what is native.

American educator, b. Franklin co., Va. Under his direction, Tuskegee Institute became one of the leading African-American educational institutions in America.

In the history of women’s education in the United States, Emma Willard was one of the first to advocate high schools for girls and the establishment of women’s colleges.

From The Dictionary of Alternatives
A term meaning ‘self-education’ or ‘self-directed learning’. The great age of auto-didacticism in England was during the formation of radical working-class organizations and movements at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century.

From The Encyclopaedia of the Renaissance
Those arts which, according to a classification made first in antiquity, were worthy of study by a free (Latin liber) man.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Method of elementary education devised by British educators Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell during the 19th cent. to furnish schooling to the underprivileged even under conditions of severely limited facilities.

From Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
The term “quadrivium” refers to a more advanced grouping of four of the seven liberal arts: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.

From Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
The trivium was a division of the seven liberal arts that included the three elements of grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

From Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century
The American faith in the power of formal education to diffuse knowledge, enhance personal mobility, and promote social stability owes much to the nineteenth century.

In the United States, programs to overcome the effects of past societal discrimination by allocating jobs and resources to members of specific groups, such as minorities and women.

Case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black.

From World of Sociology, Gale
The busing of children across district lines to create more racially balanced schools proved to be a very controversial and divisive issue.

The rights guaranteed by the state to its citizens. It incorporates the belief that governments should not arbitrarily act to infringe these rights, and that individuals and groups, through political action, have a legitimate role in determining and influencing what constitutes them.

The process of ending separation or isolation of a group who were restricted by law or custom to separate living areas, public facilities, educational institutions, etc.

Racial discrimination or racism involves treating people differently, often unfavourably, because of their nationality, their skin colour, or their religious belief.