History of education in California

The History of education in California covers public and private schools and higher education since colonial era.

Colonial era

In Alta California (that is, Spanish colonial California before 1848), the cultural was oral; outside the military written materials were rare. In the Army, a prerequisite for promotion above the rank of corporal was literacy. The Spanish policy at the time, as a means of controlling their citizens, was to oppose popular education. The first recorded school in California was opened in 1795 by a retired sergeant, in San Jose. Small schools taught by retired soldiers continued to operate through the revolution years and independence from Spain in 1821. José Antonio Carrillo is one of the few school teachers known by name from this time. Attempts were made to import educators to California from elsewhere in New Spain. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá made education a priority. After requests for government funds for school teachers went unanswered, he used his own wealth to fund two Spanish academics to establish a high school in Monterey. After several weeks they concluded life in California as unbearable and left.

In 1829, throughout Alta California, there were 339 students in 11 primary schools. During this time a noted educator in San Diego was Friar Antonio Menendez and his 18 pupils. Private schools operated throughout this time. An example was opened by Don Guillermo Arnel near present-day Salinas. For the following 20 years of Mexican administration the number of public schools ebbed and flowed. At times there were few schools operating due to a revolving lack of funds, lack of interest, politics, and lack of educators.

Founded in 1851, Notre Dame High School, in San Jose, is the oldest high school in California and the first to admit women.

Early statehood

In 1848 California was annexed from Mexico and become incorporated into the United States of America. Most of the 26,000 residents were Spanish and lived in Southern California. Perhaps two percent were literate. The new American regime dropped the oral emphasis and stressed written documentation. Literacy was now an advantage, and the Californios (Hispanics) based in Southern California embraced literacy. Public and Catholic elementary schools were established and proved popular. Loyola High School, founded by Catholics in Los Angeles in 1856, is the oldest educational institution in Southern California. By 1910. three fourths of Hispanic men and two thirds of the women could read and write.

In Northern California gold was discovered in 1848 and hundreds of thousands of miners from around the world poured in. They were young men who had left ther families behind and had little need for or interest in schools. Statehood came in 1850 and the new government was not opposed to schools. From 1854 onwards there was a small English language public education system present throughout the state. Attendance was not compulsory or universal, for example, in San Diego attendance hovered at 25%. The classes were taught at the primary level and stressed reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Colleges

Established by Catholics in 1851, Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, is the oldest operating university in California.

The origins of the public higher education system began in 1857, with the establishment of the California State Normal School to train teachers. It became San Jose State University, the first campus of the California State University. In 1855, the private College of California was established; it became the University of California, Berkeley, the first campus of the University of California to be established.

Teacher training

Further information: California State Normal School

After a private normal school closed in San Francisco after only one year, politicians John Swett and Henry B. Janes sought to establish a normal school for San Francisco's public school system, and approached George W. Minns to be the principal for the nascent institution, with Swett as an assistant principal. The normal school began operations in 1857 and became known as the Minns Evening Normal School. In 1861, after the continued success of the Evening School, superintendent Andrew J. Moulder requested that a committee be formed to create a report on the merits of fully funding a state normal school. Minns Evening Normal School became the California State Normal School in 1862, and is today San Jose State University.

See also

• School segregation in California
• History of African-American education

• History of education in the United States
• History of higher education in the United States
• History of Catholic education in the United States
• Education reform
• Education policy of the United States, for role of national government
• History of school counseling in the United States
• Normal schools in the United States, historical coverage of teacher training in major states
• Women's education in the United States

Further reading

• Benveniste, Guy, and Charles Benson. From mass to universal education: the experience of the state of California and its relevance to European education in the year 2000 (Springer Science & Business Media, 2012) online.

• Cloud, Roy W. Education in California: Leaders, Organizations, and Accomplishments of the First Hundred Years (Stanford UP, 1952) online
• Ferrier, William Warren. Ninety Years of Education in California 1846-1936 (1937) online

• Fuller, Bruce. When Schools Work: Pluralist Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles (JHU Press, 2022)

• Groen, Mark Michael.  "Public schools and politics in the Gilded Age: The role of politics and policy in shaping public education and the growth of schools and schooling in San Bernardino County, California, 1867–1890" (PhD dissertation, U of California, Riverside; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  2002. 3053667).

• Hendrick, Irving G. California education : a brief history (1980) online
• Hendrick, Irving G., “From Indifference to Imperative Duty: Educating Children in Early California,” California History 79#2 (2000): 226–49;

• James, Thomas. “State Politics and Educational Leadership in California: The Ebb and Flow of the Nineteenth Century.” The Pacific Historian 30#3 (fall 1986): 18-33.

• Myers, James Edward. “The Educational Work of Andrew Jackson Moulder in the Development of Public Education in California, 1850-1895.” (PhD. diss., University of California; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing,  1961. 0222484).

• Polos, Nicholas C. "A Yankee Patriot: John Swett, the Horace Mann of the Pacific." History of Education Quarterly 4#1 (March 1964): 17-32. online

• Swett, John. Public education in California: its origin and development, with personal reminiscences of half a century (1911) online; called the "Father of the California public school system"

Race and minorities

• Bennett, Stacie Victoria. "Schooling the Other: The Role of Education in Nineteenth-Century California" (PhD dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 2023) online.

• Hendrick, Irving G. “Federal Policy Affecting the Education of Indians in California, 1849-1934.” History of Education Quarterly 16#2 (1976), pp. 163–85. online
• Hendrick, Irving G. "The Education of Non-Whites in California, 1849-1970." (ERIC, 1977). online

• Higgins, Andrew Stone. Higher Education for All: Racial Inequality, Cold War Liberalism, and the California Master Plan (2023) summary

• Kelly, Matthew Gardner. "Schoolmaster's Empire: Race, Conquest, and the Centralization of Common Schooling in California, 1848–1879" History of Education Quarterly (2016) 56(3), 445-472. doi:10.1111/hoeq.12198

• Wollenberg, Charles. "Mendez v. Westminster: Race, nationality and segregation in California schools." California Historical Quarterly 53.4 (1974): 317-332.

Higher education

• Douglass, John Aubrey (2000). The California Idea and American Higher Education: 1850 to the 1960 Master Plan. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804731898.
  • Douglass, John Aubrey.   "Politics and policy in California higher education: 1850 to the 1960 Master Plan" (PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1992. 9237800). online
• Douglass, John Aubrey. "Creating a fourth branch of state government: The University of California and the constitutional convention of 1879." History of Education Quarterly 32.1 (1992): 31-72.

• Dumke, Glenn S. "Higher Education in California" California Historical Society Quarterly 42#2 (1963), pp. 99-110 online

• Dundjerski, Marina. UCLA: The First Century (2012) guide to contents; a major scholarly history
• Johnson, Dean C. (1996). The University of California: History and Achievements. Berkeley: University of California Printing Department.

• Marginson, Simon (2016). The Dream Is Over: The Crisis of Clark Kerr's California Idea of Higher Education. University of California Press. doi:10.1525/luminos.17. ISBN 9780520966208.

• Pelfrey, Patricia A. A brief history of the University of California (Univ of California Press, 2004) online .

• Stadtman, Verne A. (1970). The University of California 1868–1968. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.

• Smelser, Neil J., and Gabriel A. Almond, eds. Public Higher Education in California (1974; reprint 2022) ISBN 9780520314337

Primary sources

• Kerr, Clark. The Gold and the Blue: A Personal Memoir of the University of California, 1949-1967 (2 vol 2001, 2003)

External links

• Google: Public Data: Education Statistics of California