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Education in the United States
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Education in the United States is provided by public, private, and home schools. Funding comes from the state, local, and federal government, private schools are generally free to determine their own curriculum and staffing policies, with voluntary accreditation available through independent regional accreditation authorities. About 87% of school-age children attend schools, about 10% attend private schools. Education is compulsory over an age range starting between five and eight and ending somewhere between ages sixteen and eighteen, depending on the state and this requirement can be satisfied in public schools, state-certified private schools, or an approved home school program. In most schools, education is divided into three levels, elementary school, middle or junior school, and high school. Children are usually divided by age groups into grades, ranging from kindergarten and first grade for the youngest children, there are also a large number and wide variety of publicly and privately administered institutions of higher education throughout the country. Post-secondary education, divided into college, as the first tertiary degree, the United States spends more per student on education than any other country. In 2014, the Pearson/Economist Intelligence Unit rated US education as 14th best in the world, just behind Russia. In 2015 the Programme for International Student Assessment rated U. S. high school students #40 globally in Math and #24 in Science and Reading. ”King, Jr. acknowledged the results in conceding U. S. students were well behind their peers. According to a report published by the U. S. News & World Report, of the top ten colleges and universities in the world, government-supported and free public schools for all began to be established after the American Revolution. Between 1750 and 1870 parochial schools appeared as ad hoc efforts by parishes, historically, many parochial elementary schools were developed which were open to all children in the parish, mainly Catholics, but also Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Jews. Nonsectarian Common schools designed by Horace Mann were opened, which taught the three Rs and also history and geography, States passed laws to make schooling compulsory between 1852 and 1917. They also used federal funding designated by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up land grant colleges specializing in agriculture, by 1870, every state had free elementary schools, albeit only in urban centers. His movement spread to many other Southern states to small colleges for Colored or Negro students entitled A. & M. or A. & T. some of which later developed into state universities. By 1910,72 percent of children attended school, private schools spread during this time, as well as colleges and — in the rural centers — land grant colleges also. Between 1910 and 1940 the high school movement resulted in increasing public high school enrollment. By 1930,100 percent of children attended school, during World War II, enrollment in high schools and colleges plunged as many high school and college students dropped out to take war jobs. The 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v, in 1965, the far-reaching Elementary and Secondary Education Act, passed as a part of President Lyndon B
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Social science
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Social science is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It in turn has many branches, each of which is considered a social science, the social sciences include economics, political science, human geography, demography, psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, jurisprudence, history, and linguistics. The term is sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology. A more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the sciences can be found at Outline of social science. Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the sciences as tools for understanding society. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies, the term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods. Social sciences came forth from the philosophy of the time and were influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution. The social sciences developed from the sciences, or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, the beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other pioneers. The growth of the sciences is also reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The modern period saw social science first used as a distinct conceptual field, Social science was influenced by positivism, focusing on knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative, metaphysical speculation was avoided. Auguste Comte used the term science sociale to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier, following this period, there were five paths of development that sprang forth in the social sciences, influenced by Comte on other fields. One route that was taken was the rise of social research, large statistical surveys were undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was initiated by Émile Durkheim, studying social facts, a third means developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which social phenomena were identified with and understood, this was championed by figures such as Max Weber. The fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard science, the last path was the correlation of knowledge and social values, the antipositivism and verstehen sociology of Max Weber firmly demanded this distinction. In this route, theory and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject, around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. The development of social science subfields became very quantitative in methodology, examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, sociobiology, neuropsychology, bioeconomics and the history and sociology of science. Increasingly, quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of action and its implications. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a discipline of applied mathematics
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Humanities
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Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human culture. In the Middle Ages, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, today, the humanities are more frequently contrasted with natural, and sometimes social, sciences as well as professional training. The humanities include ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, art, scholars in the humanities are humanity scholars or humanists. The term humanist also describes the position of humanism, which some antihumanist scholars in the humanities refuse. The Renaissance scholars and artists were also called humanists, some secondary schools offer humanities classes usually consisting of English literature, global studies and art. Human disciplines like history and cultural anthropology study subject matters that the method does not apply to—and instead mainly use the comparative method. Anthropology is the science of humans, a science of the totality of human existence. The discipline deals with the integration of different aspects of the sciences, humanities. In the twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been divided into three broad domains. The natural sciences seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments, the humanities generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, music, and arts, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras. Anthropology does not easily fit into one of these categories, within the United States, anthropology is divided into four sub-fields, archaeology, physical or biological anthropology, anthropological linguistics, and cultural anthropology. It is an area that is offered at most undergraduate institutions, the word anthropos is from the Greek for human being or person. Eric Wolf described sociocultural anthropology as the most scientific of the humanities, the goal of anthropology is to provide a holistic account of humans and human nature. This means that, though anthropologists generally specialize in only one sub-field, they keep in mind the biological, linguistic, historic. The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a people in detail, using biogenetic, archaeological and it is possible to view all human cultures as part of one large, evolving global culture. Archaeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture, the archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a science and a branch of the humanities. It has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time
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History
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History is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory and it is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians and their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived. Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries, the modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, the word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι, the ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions. History was borrowed from Latin into Old English as stær, and it was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. In Middle English, the meaning of history was story in general, the restriction to the meaning the branch of knowledge that deals with past events, the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs arose in the mid-fifteenth century. With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the sixteenth century. For him, historia was the knowledge of objects determined by space and time, in an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are synthetic and highly inflected. The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669, Historian in the sense of a researcher of history is attested from 1531. Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, in the words of Benedetto Croce, All history is contemporary history. History is facilitated by the formation of a discourse of past through the production of narrative. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record, the task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents
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Geography
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Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of Earth. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes, Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of the Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. It is often defined in terms of the two branches of geography and physical geography. Geography has been called the world discipline and the bridge between the human and the physical sciences, Geography is a systematic study of the Earth and its features. Traditionally, geography has been associated with cartography and place names, although many geographers are trained in toponymy and cartology, this is not their main preoccupation. Geographers study the space and the temporal database distribution of phenomena, processes, because space and place affect a variety of topics, such as economics, health, climate, plants and animals, geography is highly interdisciplinary. The interdisciplinary nature of the approach depends on an attentiveness to the relationship between physical and human phenomena and its spatial patterns. Names of places. are not geography. know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself and this is a description of the world—that is Geography. In a word Geography is a Science—a thing not of mere names but of argument and reason, of cause, just as all phenomena exist in time and thus have a history, they also exist in space and have a geography. Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main fields, human geography and physical geography. The former largely focuses on the environment and how humans create, view, manage. The latter examines the environment, and how organisms, climate, soil, water. The difference between these led to a third field, environmental geography, which combines physical and human geography. Physical geography focuses on geography as an Earth science and it aims to understand the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, pedosphere, and global flora and fauna patterns. Physical geography can be divided into broad categories, including, Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns. It encompasses the human, political, cultural, social, and it requires an understanding of the traditional aspects of physical and human geography, as well as the ways that human societies conceptualize the environment. Integrated geography has emerged as a bridge between the human and the geography, as a result of the increasing specialisation of the two sub-fields. Examples of areas of research in the environmental geography include, emergency management, environmental management, sustainability, geomatics is concerned with the application of computers to the traditional spatial techniques used in cartography and topography
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Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics, in the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy, for example, is beauty objective or subjective. Are there many scientific methods or just one, is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy. Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, in one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as how are we to live, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
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Psychology
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Psychology is the science of behavior and mind, embracing all aspects of conscious and unconscious experience as well as thought. It is a discipline and a social science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified as a social, behavioral, Psychologists explore behavior and mental processes, including perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, and personality. This extends to interaction between people, such as relationships, including psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas. Psychologists of diverse orientations also consider the unconscious mind, Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. Psychology has been described as a hub science, with psychological findings linking to research and perspectives from the sciences, natural sciences, medicine, humanities. By many accounts psychology ultimately aims to benefit society, the majority of psychologists are involved in some kind of therapeutic role, practicing in clinical, counseling, or school settings. Many do scientific research on a range of topics related to mental processes and behavior. The word psychology derives from Greek roots meaning study of the psyche, the Latin word psychologia was first used by the Croatian humanist and Latinist Marko Marulić in his book, Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae in the late 15th century or early 16th century. In 1890, William James defined psychology as the science of mental life and this definition enjoyed widespread currency for decades. Also since James defined it, the more strongly connotes techniques of scientific experimentation. Folk psychology refers to the understanding of people, as contrasted with that of psychology professionals. The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China, India, historians note that Greek philosophers, including Thales, Plato, and Aristotle, addressed the workings of the mind. As early as the 4th century BC, Greek physician Hippocrates theorized that mental disorders had physical rather than supernatural causes, in China, psychological understanding grew from the philosophical works of Laozi and Confucius, and later from the doctrines of Buddhism. This body of knowledge involves insights drawn from introspection and observation and it frames the universe as a division of, and interaction between, physical reality and mental reality, with an emphasis on purifying the mind in order to increase virtue and power. Chinese scholarship focused on the advanced in the Qing Dynasty with the work of Western-educated Fang Yizhi, Liu Zhi. Distinctions in types of awareness appear in the ancient thought of India, a central idea of the Upanishads is the distinction between a persons transient mundane self and their eternal unchanging soul. Divergent Hindu doctrines, and Buddhism, have challenged this hierarchy of selves, yoga is a range of techniques used in pursuit of this goal
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United States Department of Education
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The United States Department of Education, also referred to as the ED for Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. Recreated by the Department of Education Organization Act and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 17,1979, the Department of Education Organization Act divided the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department of Education is administered by the United States Secretary of Education and it has approximately 4,400 employees and an annual budget of $68 billion. The agencys official abbreviation is ED, because DOE instead refers to the United States Department of Energy and it is also often abbreviated informally as DoEd. The Department of Education does not establish schools or colleges and this has been left to state and local school districts. The Departments mission is, to student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence. For 2006, the ED discretionary budget was $56 billion and the mandatory budget contained $23 billion, in 2009 it received additional ARRA funding of $102 billion. As of 2011, the budget is $70 billion. A previous Department of Education was created in 1867 but was demoted to an Office in 1868. As an agency not represented in the cabinet, it quickly became a relatively minor bureau in the Department of the Interior. In 1939, the bureau was transferred to the Federal Security Agency, in 1953, the Federal Security Agency was upgraded to cabinet-level status as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1979, President Carter advocated for creating a cabinet-level Department of Education, carters plan was to transfer most of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfares education-related functions to the Department of Education. Carter also planned to transfer the education-related functions of the departments of Defense, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, however, many see the department as constitutional under the Commerce Clause, and that the funding role of the Department is constitutional under the Taxing and Spending Clause. The National Education Association supported the bill, while the American Federation of Teachers opposed it, as of 1979, the Office of Education had 3,000 employees and an annual budget of $12 billion. Congress appropriated to the Department of Education an annual budget of $14 billion and 17,000 employees when establishing the Department of Education, once in office, President Reagan succeeded significantly to reduce the budget. In the 1982 State of the Union Address, he pledged, after the Newt Gingrich-led revolution in 1994 had taken control of both Houses of Congress, federal control of and spending on education soared. The GOP platform read, The Federal government has no authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, during his 1996 presidential run, Senator Bob Dole promised, Were going to cut out the Department of Education
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United States Secretary of the Interior
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The United States Secretary of the Interior is the head of the U. S. Department of the Interior. The Secretary also serves on and appoints the private citizens on the National Park Foundation board, the Secretary is a member of the Presidents Cabinet. The U. S. Department of the Interior should not be confused with the Ministries of the Interior as used in other countries. Ministries of the Interior in these other countries correspond primarily to the Department of Homeland Security in the U. S, Cabinet and secondarily to the Department of Justice. On December 13,2016, President-elect Donald Trump picked Ryan Zinke for the position of Interior Secretary, the most recent to die was William P. Clark, Jr. on August 10,2013. List of Secretaries of the Interior List of Secretaries of the Interior The Department of Everything Else, Highlights of Interior History
10.
Franklin Knight Lane
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Franklin Knight Lane was a political progressive and American Democratic politician from California who served as United States Secretary of the Interior from 1913 to 1920. Lane was born July 15,1864, near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in what was then a British colony but is now part of Canada, and in 1871, his family moved to California. Elected City Attorney of San Francisco in 1898, a post he held for five years, Lane ran in 1902 for governor and in 1903 for mayor of San Francisco, losing both races. In 1903, he received the support of the Democratic minority in the California State Legislature during the vote to elect a United States Senator from California. His fellow commissioners elected him as chairman in January 1913, the former Secretary died of heart disease at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, on May 18,1921. Because of two decades of poorly paid government service, and the expenses of his illness, he left no estate. Newspapers reported that it was said of Lane that had he not been born in what is now Canada. In spite of that limitation, Lane was offered support for the Democratic nomination for Vice President, Lane was born near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, on July 15,1864, the first of four children of Christopher Lane and the former Caroline Burns. Christopher Lane was a preacher who owned a farm outside Charlottetown, the elder Lane, disliking the island colonys cold climate, moved with his family to Napa, California in 1871, and to Oakland in 1876, where Franklin graduated from Oakland High School. Franklin Lane was hired to work in the office of the Oakland Times, then worked as a reporter. From 1884 to 1886, he attended the University of California at Berkeley, Lane later wrote, I put myself through college by working on vacation and after hours, and I am very glad I did it. He later received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from the University of California, from New York University, Brown University, after leaving college, he worked as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1889, he was admitted to the California Bar, having attended Hastings Law School, rather than practicing law, Lane moved to New York City to continue his newspaper career as a correspondent for the Chronicle. There he became a protégé of the reformer Henry George and a member of New Yorks Reform Club and he returned to the West Coast in 1891 as editor and part owner of the Tacoma News. In 1893, Lane married Anne Wintermute, they had two children, Franklin Knight Lane, Jr. and Nancy Lane Kauffman, Lane moved back to California in late 1894, and began to practice law in San Francisco with his brother George. He also wrote for Arthur McEwens Letter, a newspaper which crusaded against corruption, especially in the San Francisco Bay area, in 1897–98, he served on the Committee of One Hundred, a group which was tasked with drafting a new city charter. The charter required the city to own its own water supply and he was re-elected in 1899 and 1901. Lane ran for Governor of California in 1902 on the Democratic, at a time when California was dominated by the Republican Party, he lost by less than a percentage point to George Pardee
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National Education Association
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The National Education Association is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and other personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators. The NEA has just under 3 million members and is headquartered in Washington, the NEA had a budget of more than $341 million for the 2012–2013 fiscal year. Lily Eskelsen García is the NEAs current president, the NEA, originally on the conservative side of U. S. politics, by the 1970s emerged as a factor in modern liberalism. While the NEA has a position of non-partisan, it typically supports the Democratic Party. Conservatives, libertarians, and parents rights groups have criticized the NEAs liberal positions, State affiliates of the NEA regularly lobby state legislators for funding, seek to influence education policy, and file legal actions. At the national level, the NEA lobbies the United States Congress, from 1989 through the 2014 election cycle, the NEA spent over $92 million on political campaign contributions, 97% of which went to Democrats. The NEA has a membership of just under 3 million people, the NEA is incorporated as a professional association in a few states and as a labor union in most. The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code and it is not a member of the AFL–CIO, but is part of Education International, the global federation of teachers unions. NEA members set the policies through the Representative Assembly. The executive officers of the NEA are Lily Eskelsen García, Rebecca Pringle and these three posts are elected by the Representative Assembly. The Board of Directors and Executive Committee are responsible for the general policies, the Board of Directors consists of one director from each state affiliate, six directors for the retired members, and three directors for the student members. The board also includes representatives of ethnic minorities, administrators, classroom teachers in higher education. The NEA was founded in Philadelphia in 1857 as the National Teachers Association, zalmon Richards was elected the NTAs first president and presided over the organizations first annual meeting in 1858. The union was chartered by Congress in 1906, NEA officially merged with the American Teachers Association, the historically black teachers association founded as the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, in 1966. However, five NEA state affiliates have merged with their AFT counterparts, mergers occurred in Florida, Minnesota, Montana, New York and North Dakota. North Dakota United formed in 2013, before the 1960s, only a small portion of public school teachers were unionized. That began to change in 1959, when Wisconsin became the first state to pass a collective bargaining law for public employees, over the next 20 years, most other states adopted similar laws
