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Ambrosia D. Straub
Dr. Coronado
English 226
9 December 2014
The Beginning of Education as it is Presently Known
Formal education in America has changed in many ways since it was first established. The school system in America was mostly private — most children were homeschooled — and what little education was available for the public was unorganized until roughly the 1840s. The First Report of the Cook County Schools was written in 1862 during the common school movement to help unify the schools within the Cook County Illinois school district in response to the nationwide hope that better education would produce a better workforce and, overall, a better future for America. The Cook County School Commissioner, John F. Eberhart, visited every school in the district and submitted a 35 page report of his findings. The First Report of the Cook County Schools is a priceless piece of American history which contains valuable information that not only helped shape the way education is in the present day, but also gives an historical glimpse into life in the mid-1800’s. Modern education would not be the way it is if it were not for John F. Eberhart and this report adding uniformity; arguably the nation wouldn’t be as advanced and successful as it is without the education being regulated in this way.
John F. Eberhart is equally as important to educational history as the report he wrote. Shortly before writing this report, John F. Eberhart, feeling that Cook County schools lacked the quality and competence that was required of a successful educational system, came up with the idea to hold the first teacher training institute; he is the reason that formal education for teachers is required today. In fact he took his training sessions one step farther when, just five years after writing The First Report of the Cook County Schools, John F. Eberhart founded Cook County Normal School which was the first teacher training institution.
Eberhart realized there was a need for such teacher training schools while spending “nearly 200 days” (Eberhart 32) visiting the schools across Cook County; the teachers were not the only issues, however. He also disagreed with the haphazard and unintegrated way that schools across the district were ran and offered several suggestions and ideas as to how to better run the schools in a more uniform manner because he felt that, “a uniformity, not only in each township, but in the whole county, is highly desirable, and to that end I shall direct earnest efforts” (Eberhart 26). He was not the only man who recognised the problem with having the schools as spread out and far apart as they were in Cook County, Illinois. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche also felt that the education suffers in that situation, "in large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad" (Lapham 147). Nietzsche felt that if public education was spread too thin without proper supervision reigning the individual schools in and regulating them, public education — and through it, the children and future of America — would suffer. John F. Eberhart felt that if every school was ran the same, children across the district would all be equally educated. He had 3000 copies printed to be distributed to the schools in the district as a set of “directions and suggestions” (Eberhart 2) for each school to follow. John F. Eberhart was able to spread his suggestions across his district; however, he was not the first man to have these ideas.
Where John F. Eberhart was the father of education in the midwest, Horace Mann was arguably the father of American public education in general. He believed that by combining every economical class’s education together, the country could hold a unified educational system that would allow for the advancement of the labor movement. More internally, Mann felt that moral and character development could be better taught in the school along side the reading, writing and arithmetic. He felt that this would lead to a country of men that were better prepared for the workforce. In Lectures on Education written in 1848, Mann says:
"Education, more than anything else, demands not only a scientific acquaintance with mental laws, but the nicest art in the detail and the application of means, for its successful prosecution; because influences, imperceptible in childhood, work out more and more broadly into beauty or deformity, in after-life. No unskillful hand should ever play upon a harp, where the tones are left, forever, in the strings." (Mann 16)
Just 14 years later, when the First Report of the Cook County Schools was written, it shows that Mann’s ideals have stretched at least to the midwest from its origins in Massachusetts; Mann’s ideals reached Eberhart thus proving that education reform was successfully spreading across the nation.
Some areas of that reformation, one would assume, should not have needed to be stated in black and white. Eberhart’s opening paragraph concluded with, “The first, and perhaps greatest, care of the teacher and directors should be the health and comfort of the pupils, as no pupil can study to advantage, unless they are comfortable and well” (Eberhart 5). He felt the need to make the children’s comfort his number one priority. It is interesting to note again that this is a report that is given to every school he had recently visited and is essentially a list of reforms he feels must be put into action.
Eberhart listed some items in his report that seem to be connected to policies that the current public education system holds true today. Things such as truancy and placement testing appear in his report, though they are not labelled as such. Truancy is labeled as an evil in the pupil that the teacher must remedy (Eberhart 6), and placement tests are referred to later as classification when he reminds the educators that if the children are, “... too far advanced for their class, a barrier is laid upon their progress; while, if they are not equal to it, they become discouraged” (Eberhart 8). He recognises that children must be taught at their level and later suggests a way to regulate that with a testing system that would allow for the pupils to be properly assigned the correct level of teaching.
Education is arguably the backbone of America. Without it, we would not have made it to the moon, the Wright brothers might not have created flight, and the internet — as we know it — would not exist. If it were not for reports and ideas like the ones John F. Eberhart listed in The First Report of the Cook County Schools, education would never be as advanced as it is currently, and one could argue that America itself would not be as we know it as well. “It is to the mutual interest of all parties that the schools be successful, and all interested should be more than willing to contribute their portion to its success” (Eberhart 29). It takes reports and efforts such as this one to make a successful nation. It takes an entire nation working together towards a common goal to change things for the better. In short, Eberhart put it best when he said, “No school can be successful without a good system well followed out” (7). To take his idea further, it can be argued that no public education system can be successful without a good system as well. A system that he, himself, put forth into action over 150 years ago.
Works Cited
Eberhart, John F. First Report of the Cook County Schools. Chicago: Tribune Book and
Job Steam Printing Office, 1862. Open Library. Web. 8 Nov. 2014.
Lapham, Lewis H. Hotel America: Scenes in the Lobby of the Fin-de-sicle. London:
Verso, 1995. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
Mann, Horace. Lectures on Education. Boston: WM. B. Fowle and N. Capen, 1845. Web.
28 Nov. 2014.
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