19th+Century+Common+School+B

=What were the first schools in America like? =



American Education in the 1800s - "The Common School Period"
 * The first schools were short term elementary schools meeting only 12 weeks out of the year.
 * They often favored boys over girls and charged parental fees for their children to go there.
 * In the 1840s, education went from being completely private to being open to everyone.
 * Horace Mann worked to created a statewide common-school system.
 * Worked to create a tuition free school financed by public funds.
 * Governed by local school committees and subject to a fair amount of government regulation.
 * These schools became a common place throughout the northern and Midwest states by the Civil War.
 * Expansion of these schools to the West was slowing moving, but by the end of the 1800s schools became an American way of life.

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