William W. Cutler III is Professor of History, emeritus, at Temple University whose research and teaching focus on the relationships between education and American Culture. He was a member of the Jenkintown Board of School Directors for eight years (1995 to 2003), the last two as president. His books include Parents and Schools: The 150-Year Struggle for Control in American Education (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Two-year, public colleges—commonly known as community colleges—first appeared in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Situated at the intersection of secondary and higher education, they were local institutions that offered both general studies and vocational training. Referred to as junior colleges before the 1950s, they owed their inspiration to Benjamin Franklin ...
The private or independent schools in the Greater Philadelphia area came about mainly to satisfy a need felt by wealthy, white families to educate their children in a cultural and intellectual environment that would prepare them for the responsibilities befitting their gender, race, and class status. Most have existed for at least a ...
In the second half of the twentieth century, many parents moved out of Philadelphia, Camden, or Wilmington so that their children could be educated in the suburbs. But suburban and urban public schools could not run away from each other because they served a region that was itself becoming increasingly diverse and ...
In 1837 the Philadelphia Board of Education—then known as the Board of Controllers—embraced “universal education” and opened the city’s publicly supported and publicly controlled schools to all school-age children, free of tuition. The board proudly proclaimed: “the stigma of poverty, once the only title of admission to our public schools, has ... been erased from our statute book, ...
Family names and place names were almost the only names one needed to know when America was composed of small, homogeneous communities. Often interchangeable, such markers signified social and cultural status. But they ceased to be sufficient when America became more diverse and the family less communal. An institution like the school needed a name of its own, and over time the people of eastern ...
Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy