Write an essay about how education changed from around the 1960s to the present day.
Overview
In the United States, there is currently and has always been a clear association between education and wealth. Initially, even basic education was reserved for the children of the wealthy, and college was a finishing school for the aristocracy’s next generation.
Education became something that was encouraged, then later obligatory, for all children as the society transformed. COVID-19 exacerbated student success inequalities, mostly along economic lines, and serves as a stark reminder of the educational discrepancies that continue to exist among American kids. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 15% of students who do not complete high school are projected to be the lowest-earning population in American society, with median weekly salaries of $592.
Stacker compiled a list of 50 moments in American education history using sources such as news stories, government statistics, and historical documents. Of course, this is an incomplete list. Individual Supreme Court rulings that changed the American classroom have been the subject of volumes of writing. However, what follows is a timeline of events that link historical Puritan homeschooling to internet homeschooling in the age of the coronavirus.
Education has always been a subject of contention since knowledge equals power. The history of education was driven and was driven by the stories of race, gender, economy, religion, culture, geography, and politics. Generations of children learnt their ABCs and times tables from teachers they would remember for the rest of their lives along the road.
There were 130,930 K-12 schools in the United States as of January 2019. There are 91,276 public schools, 32,461 private schools, and 7,193 charter schools in total. Nearly 51 million children attend those schools, and another 1.69 million are homeschooled—a figure that is believed to have risen considerably during the epidemic, when, even after schools reopened, many parents and guardians chose to keep their children studying at home.
