"Three bushels of wheat and half a cow"

This section of "The Story of School" really brought it back. It examined the educational system as we moved out of the founding of our country and what formed from there. Originally, only larger towns were required to build schools. If you didn't live in one of those towns, there was no free/public schooling available and only the wealthy were able to attend. Noah Webster decided that he wanted children to learn the great legends of the origins of America such as that of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. He took everything that it meant to be American and put it into one book: the Blueback Speller (eventually becoming the Webster Dictionary). Now anyone getting an education was learning the same stuff. Then good old Thomas Jefferson came around. He decided that it would be a good idea to provide everyone with a small amount of universal education and give scholarships to a few citizens so they might attend college. Well, Jefferson's idea of "everyone" went like this: boys attended school however they wanted, girls were only allowed 3 years of schooling, and slaves were banned from the school system all together. By the time the 1830s rolled around, Horace Mann became the first secretary of education. He standardized the classroom with teacher training, the state bureau of education and free/tax supported schools. This made it so that the impoverished were finally able to attend school free of tuition and only had to rely on taxes for a free education. Around this time, the Irish immigration began to flood the eastern seaboard. The problem here lied in the fact that there was an influx of Catholic students trying to be educated in a system modeled around the protestant religion. This made it difficult for them to learn and they did not feel welcome in the American schools. Finally, the board of education was created and, along with it, so were Catholic school systems. As time marched on, Frederik Douglas stood up and said that black students shouldn't be forced to attend schools outside of their district. They should be able to go to the schools that are closest to them just like everyone else. After some hemming and hawing from the Massachusetts government, they were the first state to outlaw segregation in schools. As our eastern centralized nation began to disperse toward the west, there was a new need for schools. In order to attract residents to a new town in the west, people would build schools. Sometimes, districts covered up to 1,000 miles. Here, it was finally made acceptable for middle class women to travel west and teach because Katherine Beecher said that one day teaching would be among law and medicine for the male professions. Hopefully someday this comes true.