Education and Automobiles
During the 1920’s one huge incorporation into the American way of life was the automobile. Automobiles were huge, especially with the wealthy classes. Cars opened up to country to people, and as they became cheaper more and more people partook of this amazingly connecting invention. Many saw the influence of automobiles on transportation, both private and public, but one place that they did not foresee this drive change was the school bus.
Prior to the 1920s the typical means of transportation was the horse drawn cart, serving as a short distance transportation for a few children at a time. This made it so that many schools were very local, mostly catering to a town or a very small area of a city. This made it so that kids had quite a long ways to walk in order to reach their schools. The problem with this was that the more schools there were, the smaller the schools. Therefore, many kids had smaller, less funded schoolhouses.
In the 1920’s, the school bus became motor powered, with a steel body rather than the army grade truck introduced as an alternative to the horse drawn cart. The shift away from the slower, less safe modes of transportation provided for a faster trip to school over a dramatically increased distance. Due to this new mode of transportation schools were able to be consolidated to a district, allowing for more funding per school and a larger student body. As such there were a few key changes to the schools in the 1920s. For starters, due to a more consolidated system the progressives were able to implement many new ideas into the school system. Education was much more student oriented. Also, most schools by this time had a kindergarten program. Moreover, due to the progressive movement school attendance became mandatory. Illiteracy was reduced to 6% of the population and many were able to enjoy the exciting literature written during this period.
Overall, the 1920s were able to influence education greatly, as well as the development of the modern school bus. This was an incredibly important development due to its heavy impact on the educational history of the time. Moreover, school buses have lasted to this day, and are still a huge part of our education system, making life easy for busy parents and kids.
Sources:
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2512/Transportation-School-Busing.html
I liked how you made the connection between education and automobiles, two things that wouldn't normally be associated together. I also liked how you talked about the impacts of the school bus and analyzed its significance to education. You mention that education became more student oriented and I was wondering why that was. Was it because schools were more consolidated and the government could now focus on providing resources for a couple of schools rather than having to give little to the myriad amount of schools before the school bus? Other than educational benefits, school buses also reduce pollution. This is a link of environmental benefits that school buses provide: http://www.americanschoolbuscouncil.org/issues/environmental-benefits
ReplyDeleteI also like how you made a connection between education and automobiles, and how you discussed the positive effects of the school bus on society in terms of educational opportunity. Before the shift to steel-bodied buses, a predecessor to the modern school bus was created by dropping a typical wooden cart used to carry kids to school onto an automobile chassis.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.schoolbusdriver.org/history.html