Education and Schooling

the economic, demographic, and technological trends that were reshaping American society from a rural to an urban society and prepare their students to deal with them in intelligent, socially responsible, and democratic ways.39

Believing that multicultural diversity would contribute to America’s broad common culture, Addams sought to build connections between immigrants and the larger American society. Addams wanted public schools to feature a multicultural curriculum that included the history, customs, songs, crafts, and stories of ethnic and racial groups.40

4-8b education and schooling

Addams’s socialized education was defined in very broad social, economic, and political terms. She believed schools, like settlement houses, should work to build a sense of community in a country undergoing a profound transition from a rural to an urban industrialized and technological society. She envisioned schools as multifunctional agencies that socialized as well as taught children academic skills and subjects. Teachers, like social workers, had many-faceted responsibilities for their students’ social wellbeing. The curriculum should be reconstituted to provide broadened experiences that explored children’s immediate environment and highlighted connections with a technological society.

Addams’s enlarged concept of teaching with a social-justice mission has important implications for preservice teacher education. It means that prospective teachers need to examine issues of multiculturalism and social justice in relationship to education and schooling. For practicing teachers, it means that the classroom needs to be connected to the people in the community it serves.

39Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002, 1905), pp. 80–97. Also, see Sandra Opdycke, Jane Addams and Her Vision for America (New York: Prentice-Hall, 2011). 40Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: Macmillan, 1909), pp. 98–103. Also, see Maurice Harringon, The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009).

TiMeLine

mARiA monTEssoRi

a n d Pho tog raphs Division [LC-USZ62-99697] s t n P r i Lib rar y of C on gress

1850 1860

1870 Born in Chiaravalle, Italy

1875 Attends state primary school in Rome

1896 Awarded doctor of medicine degree by University of Rome

1870 1880 1890

1886–1889 Studies engineering at a technical institute