It goes without saying that changing of culture influenced the changes in the education. What are the outdated courses? What assumptions did such courses make about socialization and identity? What languages were taught in the past and which are taught today? What cultural needs does education fulfill?
The main feature of the development of the school and pedagogy in the USA is the lack of clearly defined feudal relations and the bourgeois basis of origin. During several centuries, immigrants from different countries came to America and they brought their traditions and their ideas about the education of the younger generation. In most cases, the settlers organized the school of the type of those that existed in their homeland. Though the settlers were of different nationalities but in this diversity English-style school was dominating. Reading, writing, English grammar, singing psalms - these are the main courses of teaching at schools at that time. And sure thing some of them are outdated. Singing psalms is not a usual subject for each school. There were such courses which were oriented to teach people literacy and labor. Also as church was highly appreciated, any school could not forget about reading the Bible. (“Historical Timeline of Public Education in the USA”) Also concerning labor there was subjects connected with agriculture and land surveying. The people actually studied in order to know simple things: how to count, how to work, how to write, to read – in order to be useful and capable to do anything.
Besides, there was a special attitude to women at schools. Os course, with years it changed. Women could freely teach only at women schools and only in 19th century the number of them as teachers at schools grew. They also got double lower salary in comparison with men.
The most popular languages which are studying now at schools are French and German. You can also meet Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Japanese. As for the higher education here students study most often Spanish, French, German and Italian. The rarest are Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and Portuguese. (Thompson) But many years ago they studied completely different languages. Of course, it has its influence. First of all different countries were on the top. People need to know different languages for good trading, for discovering new things, for having good contact with foreigners. When immigrants come from Germany, for example, you learn German, as you understand that you need to communicate with immigrants and establish relations with Germany. And for example in 20th century on the contrary one of the most studied languages was Russian, Latin, and Japanese. All of these subjects and languages were studied earlier in order for people to be socialized. As for them then was more important to have labor skills, reading and writing, so they did. They needed to know the main principles of the work in order to survive. And nowadays people study for knowledge, not for material practices. They are socialized and accepted when they can show how clever they are.
I believe the most important cultural need which education fulfills is communication. We learn different languages, we learn ethics. So we know how to act in different situations, we can travel abroad and visit any establishment we like and not only communicate with foreigners but also learn something new, develop ourselves. It is important to open new horizons and visit different places so we can accumulate our knowledge and share it with our friends and relatives. As a result we have good communication.
So, culture influences education and on the contrary. With times, people really changes their needs so they study now differently. But studying remains one of the important things of our life. The more we study – the more achievements we can have. That is why we should always move forward.
References
Historical Timeline of Public Education in the USA, Web. 5 Aug. 2016.
Thompson, Irene. Languages in the U.S. Educational System. 7 Mar. 2013. Web. 5 Aug. 2016.
