Throughout the evolution of the teaching profession, moral panics have consistently been the catalysts to significant changes. Whether related to gender, race or structural changes, instances of moral panic have held stable presences in prompting such large changes. Dictionary defined, moral panic is the process of arousing social concern over an issue, usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media.
Within the teaching profession, three notable times of moral panic between the mid 19th century and mid 20th century shaped not only who held positions as teachers, but also how the industry was seen as a whole. Catherine Beecher, an early feminist who believed that education should focus on bettering society by increasing morality …show more content…
The report was scathing, and described the male teachers as incompetent, intemperate, course, hard, unfeeling men who were too lazy or stupid to be entrusted with the care of children (Goldstein, 2014, p. 24). While the report on its own led to some questioning of the male teachers’ capabilities, the true moral panic was incited by two independent parties: Catherine Beecher’s speech, and Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The main character in Irving’s short story, Ichabod Crane, is painted as a “well-intentioned petty tyrant lording it over the children at a poorly maintained single-room schoolhouse through the generous use of a birch rod” (p. 24). One critical element of most moral panics is their tendency to focus on single stories to incite the largest reaction possible. Though Ichabod Crane was a purely fictional character, the notions he represented were something beginning to be seen within American schoolhouses. The combination of the potential for factual basis married with Irving’s dramatization of that factual basis was exactly what was needed to begin to incite a moral panic of if men were truly cut out to be …show more content…
Just after the turn of the century, Helen Todd, a Chicago factory inspector, took a survey of 500 child laborers who had dropped out of school. Independent of financial necessity, 412 of the children said they would rather spend their days working in factories than at school. The children described school as “a joyless place of ethnic bigotry, corporal punishment and mind-numbing rote memorization” (p. 80). Though the sample size was small and not representative of the entirety of children within the city, the 1909 study highlighted critical issues with how schooling was being conducted. This third wave of moral panic was likely the most defined, individual-created panic as it used a select few stories to truly incite the cultural panic. Moral panics are generally promoted through the selection of a few stories, generally told by muckrakers, and Todd’s study using just those students who had dropped out achieved exactly that. Without looking deeply at the sample, seeing that more than 80% of any selection of children would rather work in factories than attend school easily prompted discussion of how the mere structure of schooling was horrifically
Within the teaching profession, three notable times of moral panic between the mid 19th century and mid 20th century shaped not only who held positions as teachers, but also how the industry was seen as a whole. Catherine Beecher, an early feminist who believed that education should focus on bettering society by increasing morality …show more content…
The report was scathing, and described the male teachers as incompetent, intemperate, course, hard, unfeeling men who were too lazy or stupid to be entrusted with the care of children (Goldstein, 2014, p. 24). While the report on its own led to some questioning of the male teachers’ capabilities, the true moral panic was incited by two independent parties: Catherine Beecher’s speech, and Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The main character in Irving’s short story, Ichabod Crane, is painted as a “well-intentioned petty tyrant lording it over the children at a poorly maintained single-room schoolhouse through the generous use of a birch rod” (p. 24). One critical element of most moral panics is their tendency to focus on single stories to incite the largest reaction possible. Though Ichabod Crane was a purely fictional character, the notions he represented were something beginning to be seen within American schoolhouses. The combination of the potential for factual basis married with Irving’s dramatization of that factual basis was exactly what was needed to begin to incite a moral panic of if men were truly cut out to be …show more content…
Just after the turn of the century, Helen Todd, a Chicago factory inspector, took a survey of 500 child laborers who had dropped out of school. Independent of financial necessity, 412 of the children said they would rather spend their days working in factories than at school. The children described school as “a joyless place of ethnic bigotry, corporal punishment and mind-numbing rote memorization” (p. 80). Though the sample size was small and not representative of the entirety of children within the city, the 1909 study highlighted critical issues with how schooling was being conducted. This third wave of moral panic was likely the most defined, individual-created panic as it used a select few stories to truly incite the cultural panic. Moral panics are generally promoted through the selection of a few stories, generally told by muckrakers, and Todd’s study using just those students who had dropped out achieved exactly that. Without looking deeply at the sample, seeing that more than 80% of any selection of children would rather work in factories than attend school easily prompted discussion of how the mere structure of schooling was horrifically