Public Education throughout the 1930s Primary Schools, High Schools, and Universities all fed into rebuilding the Public Education System. The system needed to be rebuilt because segregation was raging. Therefore, another issue during this time was the Great Depression, which left many unemployed. As a result, most people were left broke and in poverty. Public Education was important to all people because every person wanted a good education that they could then use to provide for their families. Every aspect of Public Education was reworked by society in the 1930s. Categories including race, class size, and gender greatly revised Primary Schools. Before the Great Depression, multiple schools had class numbers of 40 and upwards. Throughout …show more content…
Occasionally young girls would stay home with their mothers to help work around the house (Vasut). Race, class size, and gender all greatly contributed to a change in the primary schools. High Schools were transformed in the 1930s in areas such as classes, teacher life, and discipline. Classes in the 1930s included art, music, FACS, math, literature, and history. Continuing on in the middle of the 1930s, FACS, art, and music were cut out of the schooling system because of budget cuts (“The 1930s Education: Topics in the News”). The reason this budget was cut was because of protesting teachers. 5,000 teachers who had not received their paychecks gathered together in Chicago on the first day of Spring Break, April 24. Not only were most of these teachers upset because they had not been given their money, but most of them felt targeted because they were married women. Most of the protesting teachers were married women because the United States Government did not believe that two people living in the same house should be allowed to get paid when there were a scarce number of jobs available (“Chicago Teachers Strike of 1933 - …show more content…
Accessed 12 March 2024. Daviess County Historical Society, daviesscountyhistoricalsociety.com. Accessed 8 March 2024. Foss, Katherine A. “Remote learning isn't new: Radio instruction in the 1937 polio epidemic.” The Conversation, 5 October 2020, theconversation.com/remote-learning-isnt-new-radio-instruction-in-the-1937-polio-epidemic-143797. Accessed 14 March 2024. “The 1930s Education: Topics in the News.” Encyclopedia.com, encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/culture-magazines/1930s-education-topics-news. Accessed 12 March 2024 “Life of Children in the 1930s by Cora Vasut.” Prezi, prezi.com/3vkfiwzj8wgs/life-of-children-in-the-1930s/. Accessed 8 March 2024. “With the fearful strain that is on me... Abraham Lincoln.” Forbes, Forbes.com/quotes/174/. Accessed 18 March
In the Roaring Twenties, people started buying household materials and stocks that they could not pay for in credit. Farmers, textile workers, and miners all got low wages. In 1929, the stock market crashed. All of these events started the Great Depression. During the beginning of the Great Depression, 9000 banks were closed, ending nine million savings accounts. This lead to the closing of eighty-six thousand businesses, a European depression, an overproduction of food, and a lowering of prices. It also led to more people going hungry, more homeless people, and much lower job wages. There was a 28% increase in the amount of homeless people from 1929 to 1933. And in the midst of the beginning of the Great Depression, President Hoover did nothing to improve the condition of the nation. In 1932, people decided that America needed a change. For the first time in twelve years, they elected a democratic president, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Immediately he began to work on fixing the American economy. He closed all banks and began a series of laws called the New Laws. L...
In Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939: Decades of Promise and Pain, author David E. Kyvig, creates historical account of the Great Depression, and the events leading up to it. Kyvig’s goal in writing this book was to show how Americans had to change their daily life in order to cope with the changing times. Kyvig utilizes historical evidence and inferences from these events and developments to strengthen his point. The book is organized chronologically, recounting events and their effects on American culture. Each chapter of the book tackles a various point in American history between 1920 and1939 and events are used to comment on American life at the time. While Kyvig does not exactly have a “thesis” per se, his main point is to examine American life under a microscope, seeing how people either reacted, or were forced to react due to a wide range of specific events or developments in history, be it Prohibition, the KKK, or women’s suffrage.
The public school system changed drastically during the Great Depression. Society started to notice the changes during the years of 1930 and 1931, when conditions were at their worst. Many students did not have the right clothing, supplies, and textbooks because parents could not afford the costs. The price of school supplies ran from $1.00 for a pen to $3.85 for a pair of shoes (Editors of Time-Life 29). In To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout’s teacher, Miss Caroline, asked one of her students where his lunch was. He then explained that he did not have a lunch because his parents could not afford it. “He didn’t forget his lunch, he didn’t have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow or the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life” (Lee 20).
Listening to the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he once said that “In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up - or else we all go down,” indicating the need of a unified country in order to solve the crisis. The Great Depression, and the many hardships that accompanied it, greatly altered American society in the 1930s in many ways such as the questioning of the capability of government, the economic effects on the nation, and the perception of society, its morals, and its values.
The Antebellum period was a time of reform and improvement. After the War of 1812, America went through a period of westward expansion, patriotism and an economic emergence as a world power. Their new found power as a country inspired reformation. Abolitionists worked to end the institution of slavery through protests, rallies, and the formation of societies; women’s rights activists advocated in a similar way. Simultaneously, many Americans supported the government’s efforts to remove Native Americans from their own land. Americans during the Antebellum period were ambitious, but contradictory in their activism; while many activists fought for the rights of slaves and women, others sought to curtail rights of Native Americans.
The Great Depression, beginning in the last few months of 1929, impacted the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide. With millions of Americans unemployed and many in danger of losing their homes, they could no longer support their families. Children, if they were lucky, wore torn up ragged clothing to school and those who were not lucky remained without clothes. The food supply was scarce, and bread was the most that families could afford. Households would receive very limited rations of food, or small amounts of money to buy food. This led to the starvation of families, including children. African-americans faced tougher challenges than most during the Depression due to discrimination. The classes hit hardest were middle-class
Education did not form part of the life of women before the Revolutionary War and therefore, considered irrelevant. Women’s education did not extend beyond that of what they learned from their mothers growing up. This was especially true for underprivileged women who had only acquired skills pertaining to domesticity unlike elite white women during that time that in addition to having acquired domestic skills they learned to read a result becoming literate. However, once the Revolutionary War ended women as well as men recognized the great need for women to obtain a greater education. Nonetheless, their views in regards to this subject differed greatly in that while some women including men believed the sole purpose of educating women was in order to better fulfil their roles and duties as wives and mothers others believed the purpose of education for women was for them “to move beyond the household field.” The essays of Benjamin Rush and Judith Sargent Murray provide two different points of view with respects to the necessity for women to be well educated in post-revolutionary America.
Technology played an important role in the daily lives of Americans in the 1920s. Many inventions and new developments occurred during this time. A large number of items that are used today were invented by individuals and teams in research laboratories. This technology brought many conveniences such as electrical power and indoor plumbing into the home. Radios gave people access to the news and provided entertainment. Mass culture was also born and the automobile became the largest consumer product of the decade. By 1929, one in five Americans had an automobile on the road. America experienced a decade of economic growth due to the impact of technology in the 1920s.
Today, students attend school in large brick buildings with several classrooms and many highly trained and specially licensed teachers, learning a wide variety of subjects. They are required by law to attend from kindergarten to twelfth grade, riding on school buses, walking short distances, or taking a parent’s car back and forth every day. Compared to those of today, schools in the 1800s were vastly different in many ways. School buildings, laws and policies regarding education, transportation, subjects taught, school supplies, and teacher license requirements have all changed in the past two centuries.
(2000). The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary'. America in the 1930s. EyeWitness to the History of the World. Retrieved from www.eyewitnesstohistory.com.
In the 1930s there was a lot of unemployment, and in 1932 one out of
The 1930’s were a decade plagued by the colossus economic downturn known as the Great Depression. With unemployment levels surpassing 20%, people did anything to earn money. This included riding the rail lines in order to look for work in other cities. In the American South, the problems of economic downturn and the problems of racial tension met in 1931 during the court case of the Scottsboro Boys.
The Great Depression was felt worldwide, in some countries more than others. During this time, many Americans had to live in poor conditions. In the United States, 25 percent of the workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm workers lost their jobs (Smiley 1). Unemployment rates had increased to 24.9 percent during 1933 (Shmoop 1). Unable to pay mortgages, many families lost their homes.
The 1930s was a bad time for public schooling, because with the Great Depression occurring at the same time, most kids could not afford the necessary clothes, shoes, textbooks, or supplies (American Cultural History). For example in To Kill a Mockingbird, Walter Cunningham’s family was so poor they had to pay with goods rather than actual money and because of that I bet they did not have proper school supplies. In today’s society, the school systems make sure kids can get what they need, through fee waivers or charities giving out supplies. Another example of the hard times i...
Do you know what it’s like to live in a cardboard home, starve, and raise a family in poverty? Unfortunately, most Americans in the 1930s went through this on a day-to-day basis. In 1929 the stock market crashed. Many people lost their life savings; they invested everything they owned in a failing stock market. The country was falling, everyone needed strong leadership and help from the government.