To Kill A Mockingbird Education In The 1930's

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A Quest for Literacy-Education in the 1930s Due to reformers in the Great Depression Era, education has changed and evolved much in the last hundred years. Education quality in the 1920s and 30s was severely lacking, due to money shortage. Scout and Jem Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird have education quality surpassing most other schools of the time. Throughout the story, Scout is in first through third grade, while Jem is in fifth grade through high school. Most schools were in desperate need of help, and the school system in general needed help. Simply put, there was no money to fund schools, causing them to close and have old materials. In the 1930s, many people were not literate, which led to school reform and new state laws. …show more content…

Jem Finch references one of the main reformers of the time while talking to Scout: “I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin’ the first grade, stubborn. It’s the Dewey Decimal System” (Lee 24). While Jem does not mention the correct system, he is still speaking about the famous reformer John Dewey. Dewey was a big time supporter of progressive education. He spent many years trying to bend school patterns to make students, to paraphrase “A Brief Overview of Progressive Education,” more prepared to participate in a democratic society (1). He believed that students should focus more on creativity and involvement in class. On Biography.com, it also mentions other things that he believed in: “...that education should be based on the principle of learning through doing” (2). When his beliefs were developed into a system, they were temporarily adopted by the schools. However, principles of progressive education fell out of favor until later in the nineteenth century after just a few years. While Dewey was one of the main reformers, he also had help from others, such as Francis W. Parker, Ella Flagg Young, and the United States government. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal helped many groups of people, including helping Native Americans with their educational system: “The New Deal, therefore, provided the children with a basic …show more content…

For example, in regards to Burris Ewell and his lack of going to school: “She reckons she’s carried out the law just gettin’ their names on the roll and runnin’ ‘em here the first day” (Lee 36). This shows how laws were less strict, nowadays, kids must go to school, not just be on the roll. Schools were so short on money in the 1920s and 30s that they had little time to focus on kids like Burris. Some states, such as Kansas, attempted to rectify the money problem through laws: “Kansas...had an economy legislature that really did things...they sternly limited school levies” (Shannon 96). Due to lack of money, the Great Depression forced many states to pass laws to use their money more efficiently. Iowa is another of those states: “The 1933 legislature brought forth much legislation. But an analysis of the 32 new laws that affect the schools shows that all but one were concerned with economy” (95). One could argue that the Depression actually helped schools, in forcing the states to try and keep them together. Despite this, schools suffered throughout the Great Depression and there was a lot of work done later to fix some of the

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