Curriculum
Common schools typically taught The three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic), history, geography, and math. There was wide variation in regard to grading (from 0-100 grading to no grades at all), but end-of-the-year recitations were a common way that parents were informed about what their children were learning.
Although common schools were designed by Mann to be nonsectarian, there were several fierce battles, most notably in New York and Philadelphia, where Roman Catholic immigrants and Native Americans objected to the use of the King James Version of the Bible. Even without Bible readings, most common schools taught children the general Protestant values (e.g., work ethic) of nineteenth-century America.
Read more about this topic: Common School
Famous quotes containing the word curriculum:
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)