School: The History of Education 1900-1950

Watching episode 2 of this series was very interesting to do! As a social studies concentration I like watching historical footage. The history of school and public education being known as "as American as apple pie" was a concept I never knew about. I always hear about how school was very different and how things that were done in schools decades ago would not fly in schools today, but I have never seen any of those things. It was interesting to see how multicultural the majority of the classrooms were, however I didn't necessarily agree with the fact that educators forced all students to kind of leave their national heritage at the door and speak English only in schools. Another interesting thing in the video that I noted was how tracking was done. It was a lot more serious than it is today, as between the years 1900 and 1950, students were tracked into the jobs they were going to do, or the track to be prepared for college. It was up to the schools to determine who was smart enough to be on the college track. There was little maneuverability as a student.