Fall/Winter 2006: On Principle

Sidebar: Public Education

Even before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, in which the Supreme Court declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," Americans had long been engaged in lively debates over how to run, fund, and improve public schools.

Thomas Jefferson, one of America's earliest advocates of public education, believed a strong society depended on wider access to education. In 1789, he drafted the Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, calling for three years of publicly funded elementary school for boys and girls, and a secondary level of learning for the most talented boys. While his plan was progressive for its time, it provided no opportunities for nonwhite children and only limited ones to women.

Access to education expanded with the growth of common schools in the Northeast and Midwest during the 1830s and 1840s. Most common schools occupied one-room schoolhouses in which boys and girls of different social classes studied. These schools were designed to provide free education to all, but racial minorities frequently were excluded. As common schools flourished, Catherine Beecher--sister of abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe--became a leading promoter of women's education, opening several secondary schools for girls and founding the American Woman's Educational Association in 1852.

After the Civil War, advocates fought to give African Americans access to education. The Freedmen's Bureau established a network of schools that had instructed more than 247,000 students by 1879. When Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881, black Americans finally had an opportunity for education and training in the skilled trades.

While America's schools became more inclusive during the twentieth century, the search for an ideal public education system continued into the new millennium. Federal legislation such as "No Child Left Behind" represents part of an ongoing struggle to help all American children reach their highest potential, regardless of race, gender, or class.

--Erika Weisensee

Published in the Fall/Winter 2006 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2006 Oregon Council for the Humanities