American Education Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

American Education Today - Essay Example Society has no other institutions upon which it can rely in the matter. If schools and colleges do not emphasize rigorous intellectual training, there will be none. This is not true of the other services that educational agencies may incidentally render. It is well for the schools to pay attention to public health, for example, but if they are unable to do so, the health of the nation will not go uncared for. Puritan values and beliefs became a part of education system and pedagogy. The crucial doctrinal issues of the century concerned questions about human nature and God's grace. In what manner did God communicate redemption How might an individual transcend sin and find salvation How did God elevate a soul into union with Himself Protestants from the beginning rejected Catholic teaching concerning a "divine spark" that survived the Fall and remained unblemished by Original Sin. Following Stubblefield and Keane (1994) puritan philosophies reflected in education and brought religious values to curriculum. Freedom was indeed one pole of the Puritan axis, but order was the other. The new order was to be rooted in biblical authority and precedent. If any people ever were, Puritans were people of the Book. The new order they created, and the world view that undergirded it, was meticulously scriptural in nature. "Puritans rejected liturgical traditions, no matter how venerable, that had no di scernible basis in the Bible, replacing them with worship and devotional practices seen as more soundly scriptural" (Karier 1991, 34). At the same time, as we have seen, some devotional themes and methods with slight scriptural foundation were so strong that they were able to survive the transition from medieval Catholicism to New England Puritanism. New England's participation in this moral system is well known and persisted through the century even as the society itself changed. Education system introduced religious education and teaching as the main subject studied during the colonial era. Today, religion is still of vital importance for private and public schools. Puritan philosophy brought to education ideas of sin and guilt, honesty and patience (Karier 1991). Puritan emphasis on literacy, based on the Protestant insistence that individuals must be able to read their own Bibles, was a further iconoclastic and socially divisive element in Puritan devotion. Puritanism encouraged believers to read, meditate, and pray on their own. Meditation focused on personal experience, and prayers expressed personal hopes and concerns. Puritanism was not only a lay movement; like radical religious movements in Europe generally, it was also a women's movement. In their writing, Gordon and Gordon (2002) state that women formed the "front line in defense of their preachers" under persecution in England, and women emerged as leaders and "prophets" among radical groups throughout the Civil War. The first Latin grammar school was opened in 1635 for high social classes including clergy and state officials. The preliminary grammar or Latin curriculum also became compartmentalized, entrusted to specialist grammar teachers. The effect of this new specialization of education is well known at the university level: scholasticism became ever more preoccupied with the