Public education is supposed to prepare an informed citizenry - elementary teachers have just two ho

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

hours a week to teach social studies

The founders of the United States were intentionally building a nation based on the ideals of the Enlightenment, a movement centered on individual happiness, knowledge and reason. This new approach to defining a country – rather than basing it on language, ethnicity or geographic proximity – meant the new United States would have to educate its citizenry with the ideas, skills and values necessary to build and grow their democracy.

As a result, the founders called for schools to be established and funded. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and others believed it was the responsibility of the government to provide that education. Jefferson believed that education would serve as the moral foundation of the nation and redress the effect of poverty because education would be available to all children.

Though public schools did not become widespread until the 19th century, the goal of educating informed citizens capable of inquiry and critical thinking was part of the democratic republic from the start. But nearly 250 years after the nation’s founding, its schools struggle to achieve that goal.

A fourth basic subject

Foundational American educational theorist John Dewey, who worked and wrote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, promoted education that would help build and maintain a democracy made up of different groups of people. In his 1916 book “Democracy in Education,” he warned that focusing education only on the “three Rs: reading, ‘writing and 'rithmetic was not enough to educate a useful citizen.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/public-education-supposed-prepare-informed-121413790.html