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History of Education in 1800’s

1800- Mount Holyoke College is a liberal arts women’s college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Originally founded by Mary Lyon as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary on 8 November 1837, it is the “first of the Seven Sisters” and is the oldest continuing institution of higher education for women in the United States. In addition, according to the United States Department of Education, “Mount Holyoke’s significance is that it became a model for a multitude of other women’s colleges throughout the country. (contributors, 2008) 1834 was a turning point for Mary Lyon. She decided to leave Ipswich Female Seminary, where she was assistant principal, and focus all of her time and efforts on founding an institution of higher education for women. For the next three years, she crusaded tirelessly for funds and support. It was not the best time to ask people for donations, the U. S. was in a severe economic depression. But Mary Lyon persisted.

She wrote circulars and ads announcing the plan for the school, raised money, persuaded prominent men to back her enterprise, developed a curriculum, visited schools and talked to educators as far away as Detroit, chose the school’s location, supervised the design and construction of a building, brought equipment, hired teachers, and selected students. She endured ridicule from those who felt her ambitious undertaking would be “wasted” on women. Her constant travels often left her in a state of exhaustion. Yet, Mary Lyon never doubted her belief that women deserved to have the same opportunities for higher education as their brothers.

Mary Lyon’s innovative goals for Mount Holyoke set the Seminary apart from other female seminaries of the period. They were as followed: A curriculum equivalent to those at men’s colleges, a minimum entrance age of 17, low tuition to make education affordable to students from modest backgrounds. Mount Holyoke’s was $60 a year and had rigorous entrance examinations to make sure students were adequately prepared. A lack of funds forced many 19th-century female seminaries to close after a few years. A good number were proprietary, or owned by an individual, eager to make a profit.

Some schools were so dependent upon the founder’s popularity, that the institution collapsed after his or her death. Mary Lyon sought no affiliations with a religious denomination or wealthy sponsor. Instead, she formed a Board of Trustees, a group of dedicated male supporters who donated their time to help Mount Holyoke thrive and succeed. (College, 1997) 5th-The New York State Asylum for Idiots was authorized by the New York State Legislature in 1851, acting upon a recommendation contained in the 1846 annual report of the New York State Asylum for Lunatics.

Hervey B. Wilbur, M. D. , was appointed the first superintendent and remained in that position until his death in 1883. First located on rented landed in Albany, it admitted its first “pupils” in 1851. The cornerstone was laid in 1854 for a new building in Syracuse, and the institution removed to Syracuse in 1855. After 1855 it was generally known as either the New York Asylum for Idiots or just the State Idiot Asylum, but in 1891 it was officially renamed the Syracuse State Institution for Feeble-Minded Children.

At some point, the name was changed to The Syracuse State School for Mental Defectives, and later became just the Syracuse State School. Wilbur collaborated with Edward Seguin, M. D. , the originator of the physiological method of training. Maria Montessori was also Seguin’s student and much of the “Montessori Method” is based on foundations laid by Wilbur and Seguin in Syracuse. In its 85th annual report (1935), the Syracuse State School rightly noted that it was “the pioneer institution in the United States for the care and training of mentally deficient children. Surgery was done in the old building, and at least one child was born there. The School also operated a farm and a number of satellite cottages. In the 1970s, the Syracuse State School building was torn down and replaced by a residential facility called the Syracuse Developmental Center. With the growing emphasis on community living rather institutionalization for developmentally disabled persons, no new individuals were placed at SDC and there has been a gradual movement of residents into the community. In early 1998, there were about six persons left.

SDC is to be closed, and it is not clear what will happen to the building. (University, 1988) 8th-The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution is one of the post-Civil War amendments (known as the Reconstruction Amendments), first intended to secure rights for former slaves. It includes the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, among others. It was proposed on June 13, 1866, and was ratified on July 9, 1868. It is perhaps the most significant structural change to the Constitution since the passage of the United States Bill of

Rights. (contributors, Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 2008) The amendment provides a broad definition of United States citizenship, superseding the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford that had excluded African Americans. The amendment requires states to provide equal protection under the law to all persons within their jurisdictions and was used in the mid-20th century to dismantle legal segregation, as in Brown v. Board of Education.

Its Due Process Clause has been the basis of much important and controversial case law regarding privacy rights, abortion, and other issues. The first section formally defines citizenship and protects people’s civil rights from infringement by any State. This represented the Congress’s reversal of that portion of the Dred Scott decision that declared that blacks were not and could not become citizens of the United States or enjoy any of the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had already granted U. S. itizenship to all people born in the United States; the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment added this principle into the Constitution to keep the Supreme Court from ruling the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to be unconstitutional for want of Congressional authority to pass such a law or a future Congress from altering it by a bare majority vote. The second section establishes rules for the apportioning of Representatives in the Congress to states, essentially counting all residents for apportionment and reducing apportionment if a state wrongfully denies a person’s right to vote.

This section overrode the provisions of Article I of the Constitution that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of allotting seats in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. The third section prevents the election or appointment to any federal or State office of any person who had held any of certain offices and then engaged in insurrection, rebellion, or treason. The fourth section confirmed that the United States would not pay “damages” for the loss of slaves, or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, several English and French banks had loaned money to the South during the war. contributors, Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 2008) 9thThe Panic of 1873 was a severe nationwide economic depression in the United States that lasted until 1877. It was precipitated by the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia banking firm Jay Cooke and Company on September 18, 1873 along with the meltdown on May 9, 1873 of the Vienna Stock Exchange in Austria. It was one of a series of economic crises in the 19th and early 20th centuries. (contributors, Panic of 1873, 2008) Years of government promoted speculative credit had created vast overexpansion of the nation’s railroad network.

The failure of the Jay Cooke bank set off a chain reaction of bank failures and temporarily closed the stock market. Factories began to lay off workers as the nation slipped into depression. The New York Stock Exchange closed for 10 days. Of the country’s 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt. A total of 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875. Unemployment reached 14% by 1876, during a time which became known as the Long Depression. Wage cuts and poor working conditions among railroad workers resulted in Great Railroad Strike of 1877, preventing the trains from moving. President Rutherford B.

Hayes sent in federal troops in an attempt to stop the strikes. Fights between strikers and troops killed more than 100 and left many more injured. The tension between workers and the leaders of banking and manufacturing lingered on well after the depression lifted in the spring of 1879, the end of the crisis coinciding with the beginning of the great wave of immigration into the United States which lasted until the early 1920s. Poor economic conditions caused voters to turn against the Republican Party. In the 1874 congressional elections, the Democrats assumed control of the House.

Public opinion during the period made it difficult for the Grant Administration to develop a coherent policy regarding the Southern states. The North began to steer away from Reconstruction. As Southern states fell to the Democrats, African Americans found that they could no longer pursue activist policies of reform. Retrenchment was a common response of southern states to state debts during the depression. As funds were cut from state governments, education often suffered, despite being an integral part of blacks’ hopes for social reform. contributors, Panic of 1873, 2008) 10th-Homer Plessy, 1863 to 1925, was the American plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Arrested, tried and convicted of a violation of Louisiana’s racial segregation laws. The resulting “separate-but-equal” decision against him had wide consequences for civil rights in the United States for the next half century in that it legalized segregation. (contributors, Homer Plessy, 2008) In 1892, a 30-year old shoemaker named Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in a car for only white people on the East Louisiana Railroad.

He had refused to move to a black car. Even though he was seven-eighths white and only one-eighth black, he was put in jail. The Louisiana law stated that if you had any black ancestors, you were considered black. Because of this, Plessy was required to sit in the “colored” or “black” car. In court, Plessy argued that the law violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment made slavery illegal in the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment states that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state where they live.

It also says that no state can deny citizens of the United States equal protection of the laws. Plessy argued that the Louisiana law violated these amendments because on the train Blacks and Whites could be separate, if it was equal, but it wasn’t. The White cars were nicer and cleaner than the Black cars. Judge John Howard Ferguson had recently ruled the law “unconstitutional on trains that traveled through many states,” but in this case, Judge Ferguson ruled that Plessy was guilty, because the state had the right to regulate railroad companies that run only in the state. (Quest, 2008)

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