Posted on 01/28/2012 6:08:27 PM PST by Starman417
“I have had principals tell me to pass a kid because if I didn’t, he might feel bad and drop out, and that would look bad on the principal’s record.”
Social promotion in my opinion is one of the most pernicious and widespread evils in education today. When students fail, 9/10 of the time it is because they didn’t try to pass. And why should they, if someone is willing to send them on regardless? It makes holding students to any sort of standard, let alone a high one, difficult or impossible. And of course, it would be the teacher’s fault (SARC).
The University of North Carolina was established and chartered in 1789 at Chapel Hill under that Constitutional mandate, but practical reality apparently prevented any sort of broad establishment of public schools for elementary education until just prior to the Civil War.
The people of a given locality typically banded together, built a schoolhouse and hired a teacher or teachers themselves, just as they did in colonial times. The old, extended family schoolhouse from that era still stood in my childhood. Six fairly large family farms all in proximity, all with the typically large number of children. The school bore the family surname. It was used as a tobacco packhouse after public schools came in.
This was the norm in much if not all of rural NC, to my knowledge. Municipalities of any scale had their own schools. Historically church-run areas such as the Moravian settlements surrounding Salem and the Quaker settlements surrounding modern-day Greensboro had their church-run schools. There were institutes run by various groups as well, for instance the Masonic Institute, etcetera.
Hence the rise of the community college and their ‘developmental’ curriculum. A high school diploma is supposed to represent twelve-years of study. How can someone be granted a high school diploma without being able to read at a high-school level, write a paragraph, or do long division? I know why, but I don’t like to think about it. And remember, colleges are businesses too. Community colleges make money from these students and their families and their respective state governments. It doesn’t take too much tin foil to get me thinking there are other reasons for ‘social promotion’.
“This was the norm in much if not all of rural NC, to my knowledge.”
You are correct. The state did not truly establish a public school system as such until 1907, although local school boards retain considerable control, mostly in matters of buildings and physical plant, and personnel.
Tell her to be careful of AP Government and US History. They don’t teach about liberty, the Founding, or the impact the Bible had on American liberties. Other than that just be wary that it’s all taught with a solid Left-wing bias which I presume she already knows.
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