Saturday, October 3, 2009

Sputnik



During the first half of the twentieth century, education consisted of teaching the basics and professional studies were only attainable by going to college. The launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 came with a major reform and a change in the national way of thinking. New curriculums in American schools began to emphasize a sense of nationalism and the need to better than the soviets.


After world war II as many nations of Europe were indebted financially to the United States, the common theme was that the US was the most powerful nation in the world. With the launch of Sputnik, president Eisenhower decided to put the nation's sense of power to the test. The president began a series of initiatives aimed to address the technical shortcomings of the United States. The National Defense Education Act was passed and is considered one of the largest reforms in the history of American education with over $1 billion for schools. New federal programs allowed many students to seek high education. New efforts in vocational education were designed to train students in various technical subjects that overall assured that the nation was equipped with competent individuals.


As the space race continued, school classes began to employ measures of safety regarding a nuclear war. Americanism began to show its way into textbooks and many students adult beliefs began as study subjects in school. The threat of communism and socialism has a very negative connotation in american society. The threat of war can be considered a very serious and dangerous environment in any given country but good things can come out of it. Without the threat of being inferior to the Soviet Union, the United States was able to improve in many different aspects including education.


Had Sputnik not begun the space race who knows how public education would have ended up in today’s modern times. Other reforms came later in the way of preparing better teachers and in professionalizing the teaching field. Perhaps one can say that professionalizing teachers was an indirect result of the space race. As much as americans disliked the soviets, it was thanks to that little satellite that they were able to improve upon the educating of their citizens.

Socrates' Influences in Modern Education


Modern education is a culmination of many years of theories and the end result of an evolutionary road that began thousands of years ago. Psychological theories that have been studied thoroughly in the past hundred years may be the main processes used for educating; but the ethical and reasoning environment that schools have come to represent cam from long before our time.

As the greeks became on the first civilizations to have a curiosity about the world, Socrates the philosopher began to convey ideas that revolutionized how humans thought. These ideas and theories are still used today in modern education. The elenchus, socrates method of debating, is a way of asking and answering questions to stimulate rational thinking and illuminate ideas. Today’s teaching environments are based essentially on asking questions and answering them. This way of teaching might seem like an obvious effective method, but to the greeks it was a new way of reasoning.

Socrates’ views on truth and happiness were one of the firsts to make people think about what kind of persons they were. Wisdom was a centrally important aspect of achieving happiness. Although today’s society is more concerned with maintaining a healthy lifestyle by dieting and exercising in order to live longer, Socrates believed in achieving the best possible state of the soul even if it included achieving wealth and honor. In today’s schools the pursuit of happiness is determined by preparing the students for a future by educating them properly. Students can make their own happiness and the schools will provide the education necessary to become successful. Socrates' lack of belief in the greek’s religions led him to develop moral reasoning that did not need a religious reason.

Morality should be based on man’s search for truth and not on the fear of religious deities. This sort of argument may have led to Socrates’ death and it is still a debated issue today among religious and non religious people. American public schools have to follow a doctrine of separating religion with education and the teachings of morality can be learned without any religious arguments.