PBS The Story of School

I thought that the episode was really interesting in the way that it described how schools responded to the flood of immigrants that came to the United States during the early 1900s. One of the ways that this occurred was in the banning of child laborers, taught vocational skills that would be useful for factory jobs, and focusing on teaching them the English language. I thought that it was really interesting in the way that the teachers tried to "Americanize" these children, trying to teach them American holidays and the American way of life. One of the things that was different was how they tried to increase health and hygiene in the students, including introducing swimming pools in order to help bath the students; along those same lines, teachers tried to teach behavior by have afternoon tea. I liked the fact that the schools opened up at night in order to help reach the community as well; this shows that the school system and community leaders cared about the entire well-being of the community.
The piece about the Life Adjustment Education was a riot; to think that young students were actually educated on things such as when to kiss and how late to stay out is baffling. I can only imagine what I would have thought as a young student sitting through one of those movies.
Along these same lines, it is sad that the immigrant school systems quickly became discriminatory and tracked by nationality and race. The piece about the IQ testing was extremely shocking: the tests were extremely subjective, and caused students to be tracked into lower levels without having any say in the matter.