PBS Documentary: 1950-1980 Response

This section of the documentary was very interesting. It definitely seemed a lot closer to the way schools are now. It’s good to hear a more complete and finished telling of what happened with the different civil rights laws and court cases. With Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, I wasn’t aware that some southern schools used the National Guard to keep black children out of schools, or that the President called in the military to enforce the law.  That was really interesting to me, to think that a military conflict, very much along the lines of North versus South, was occurring almost 100 years after the American Civil War. I also wasn’t aware that Brown v. Board of Education was a unanimous case in the Supreme Court.

As a longtime rebel, modeled after those in the 1960s, I was surprised to hear that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a champion of civil rights, or that he was a teacher. I clearly see my own bias in that perception, and I’m glad that was opened up.

As for most of the documentary, I am painfully uneducated about the majority of the issues. I know a good bit about Title 9, thanks to a friend who is an expert on the law, but I know almost nothing about bussing, the demands of Mexican-American students and faculty, and other more contemporary issues. That is obviously something I will have to keep an eye out for to study. 

Response to 1900-1950 History of Schools

I was fascinated to learn about the history of standardized testing in schools between 1900 and 1950. Entire educational history, from Dewey to the experiential schools to Sputnik, is really cool to me. It’s really interesting to look at all of the things in schools – what I like, what I hate – and see what the circumstances were that led to the institutionalization of those elements. Of course I’m not surprised, for instance, that in the midst of World War I, students were encouraged to speak only English and to burn German-language books. No matter what the issue of the day is, people are passionate about it. The thing that really struck me about the documentary, however, is that when I go out into the school, simply by teaching and doing my job, I will be contributing to the future “history of education.” This is all the more reason to be deliberate in everything I do.