Riverside High School - Mercury Yearbook (Milwaukee, WI)

Page 15 text:

MR. BAKER VicefPrincipa1

Page 14 text:

MR. CHAMBERLAIN Principal

Page 16 text:

EDUGATIGN IN THE PAST This year schools all over the United States are celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of schools in America, a celebration which will affo:d a chance for school pupils everywhere to ap' preciate more fully the progressive steps which have made possible their own modern schools. In this development some of the most interesting changes have taken place in the curricula offered by the educational institutions. One of the earliest legislative attempts made by any of the colonies was the Law of 1642 which required that all children be taught to read, and it may be inferred by that law that the earliest curriculum consisted of reading, a course which was most frequently taught at home. As the colonists had brought nearly all of their customs from the continent, it was inf evitable ,that the first schools established should be copies, and so the principal school became the Latin Grammar School. This type of school transplanted from England confined its teach' ing to Latin and Greek and was attended therefore by none of the middle class. The colonial grammar school, which was made necessary by the practical and commercial needs of the middle class, became a contempory of the Latin Grammar School and taught all subjects closely related to the needs of the people attending. Parochial schools also established at this time confined their subjects to an elementary curriculum which included reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. The desire for more practical training a little later led Benjamin Franklin in his academy to offer fa' cilities for higher learning, and English, science, geography, and other subjects were proposed for study. The Latinists were greatly opposed to this movement and decried a school for teach' ing the vulgar tongue and the sciences in that tongue. But the academy, because of its practical value to the colonists and later Americans, continued to flourish, and from 17804850 approximate' ly six thousand academies were incorporated in the states as a whole. The curriculum became, in the course of the academy's .progression, very inlclusive, offering sciences, grammar, speech, constitution, drawing, evidences of Christianity, geography, history, Hebrew, Latin, Italian, Greek, German, ecof nomics, stenography, surveying, teaching, and music. The academies, however, were still confined to the more wealthy students who could pay for their upkeep, and as higher education was needed by those who could not afford tuition fees, free schools, the English High Schools, were established which were divided into three classes. The first class at the school offered composition, literature, grammar, declamation, geography, and arithme' tic. The second class repeated or continued some of the former subjects and added ancient and Ten