Paper Summary:

This paper explains that public school teaching in grades K-12 has evolved since the ten-year period from 1900 to 1910; however, some similarities remain when compared to the state of the teaching profession today. The author points out that teachers today concentrate more on teaching itself and function less in the ancillary roles that they did in the early 1900s; nonetheless, the extra custodial requirements of a teacher's job in the 1900s have been replaced today with such tasks as bureaucratic paperwork. The paper relates that the societal status of teachers has declined because (1) education and knowledge in and of themselves no longer garner the respect they once did and (2) it requires comparatively less rigorous academic knowledge to become a teacher today than it did in the 1900s. The paper includes several lengthy quotations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Teachers' Roles
Teachers' Functions
Teachers' Working Conditions
Teachers' Status
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"A lack of teacher autonomy in American public education was a concern at the turn of the 20th century, just as it is today at the turn of the 21st. For example, at the Laboratory School that the educational reformer John Dewey and his wife Alice ran at the University of Chicago in the early 1900's, Dewey, "while working closely with teacher advocate Ella Flagg Young, Dewey wrote incisively about teachers and the political constraints that limited their effectiveness." A century later, in the early years of the 21st century, unfortunately, little has changed."

Sample of Sources Used:

• "American Cultural History: 1900-1909." Retrieved April 5, 2006, from: <http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade00.html>.
• "American Elementary Schools in the Early 1900's." Retrieved April 5, 2006, from: http://library.thinkquest.org/J002606/early1900s.html
• Cuban Larry. "Persistent Instruction: The High School Classroom, 1900-1980." Phi Delta Kappan, 64 (October 1982). 113-18.
• "Education." Chicago in 1900: A Millenium Biography." Retrieved April 5, 2006, from: <http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/1900/edu.html>.
• "John Dewey." Wikipedia. Retrieved April 4, 2006, from: <http://en.wikipedia. org.wiki/John_Dewey.html>.

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