The Education Hucksters

By G. Howard Poteet

You've seen their ads: "Make Big Money t" They're the home- study schools that advertise on matchbook covers. You know what people say about them. Is it true? Spending 1-1/2 times the total amount spent on college tuition, 55 million people took courses by mail during the golden age of correspondence schools (1870-1970). For some, it was a waste of money; for others, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Their success ranged widely. For Mike McHale, who had gone to work in the coal mines when he was 8 years old, a correspondence course enabled him to pass a state exam to become a foreman. For Gertrude Rush, it enabled her to become the first Black woman to be admitted to the bar in Iowa where she was the only Black woman attorney until 1950. Countless governors, congressmen and women, as well as personalities in show business and the arts have also taken correspondence courses. Then, why such a poor reputation? It was often deserved when unscrupulous school owners victimized the gullible. But, in many cases, the "victims " got what they deserved when they patronized diploma mills.. Attempts to stop these phony operations was difficult. In one case, to close a school, agents allowed the fake dentist who owned it to grind down their teeth to obtain evidence to arrest and convict him. This book tells all about the good, the bad, and the clueless schools. In addition, you'll be shown all about the way the schools operated, how people learn on their own, and the progress of good schools towards understanding what works and what does not. You might even use it to decide on whether or not you or your children should take a distance education course. The author is an experienced expert in this area of education and has published two books and many articles on the subject.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G. Howard Poteet
• Release date: Feb 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310917615

G. Howard Poteet

A New Jersey professor, G. Howard Poteet holds a law degree, two master's degrees, and a doctorate in English (Columbia University, NYC). He has published 37 books iwith major print publishers (McGraw- Hill, Harcourt, Prentice-Hall) as well as 3 digital books with Smashwords. One of his books has been translated into 10 languages . and made into a TV series (Russia).He has written and published 3 distance education courses as well as numerous poems, short stories, and essays in publications as varied as The NEW YORK TIMES, THE ENGLISH JOURNAL, MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED, READING IMPROVEMENT, THE NEWARK STAR LEDGER, AUDIO-VISUAL NEWS, NEWS AND VIEWS, and many others. Dr. Poteet has also been editor of 3 newsletters including COLLEGE ENGLISH NOTES and contributing editor to NEWS AND VIEWS and THE FILM JOURNAL ADVERTISER.

Book preview

The

Education Hucksters

A History of

Proprietary Correspondence Schools in the

United States 1870 –1970

by G. Howard Poteet

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2016 by G. Howard Poteet

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author except for brief quotations embodied in reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted material

.Introduction

Distance education: the process of an individual learning content presented systematically by an instructor who is not physically present. What is currently called distance education has, at varying times, been called correspondence education, home study, non-resident study, extension study, self-directed study, and even more loosely, self-study and independent study.

The present study is of proprietary schools in the United States which conducted instruction by mail during the years 1870 to 1970. It focuses specifically on printed instructional materials produced in varying formats: loose sheets, pamphlets, or bound books, which were sometimes supplemented with other media.

Distance education differs from traditional education in that a self-directed student can proceed as fast or as slow as desired, courses are open-admissions (with no prerequisites), and there are no personality conflicts with instructors or other students.

In general, there are two types of correspondence courses: self-contained courses with or without self-correcting tests and/or assignments, and full-service courses with or without tests and/or assignments and other correspondence that must be sent to the school.

Since the former courses lack a connection with an instructor, they are essentially stand-alone printed materials. The latter courses are termed full-service schools under the theory that the communication between school and student creates an educational relationship.

Chapter 1

Correspondence Education Pre-1890

.

American Life Pre-1890

Vernon Parrington describes American thought in the 19th century as the result of Ralph Waldo Emerson and transcendentalism: Exploring the egalitarian premises of the doctrine of natural rights, it amplified the emerging democratic theory by substituting for the Puritanical conception of human nature as vicious, the conception of human nature as potentially excellent and capable of indefinite development. [1]

American Education Pre-1890

Educators in the United States in the years before 1890 accepted and applied a number of the philosophical ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. It was Rousseau who said that thought began with sensation and that teaching should make use of the senses. Pestalozzi developed an educational system that studied concrete objects before introducing abstract ideas. American educator Henry Barnard introduced Pestalozzi’s idea into the U.S. in the late 1800s and established free public high schools for all classes of society.

Johann Herbart, the German philosopher, advocated a highly structured method of teaching, i.e., prepare for a new lesson, present the lesson, connect the new lesson with old lessons, review the major points, and test. In general, this was the basic pedagogical model of 19th Century educators.

Herbert Spencer, a British sociologist, adapted the Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest by theorizing that the fittest individuals survived by adapting. Spencer warned that the public school would cater to the lowest common denominator of students. In addition, Spencer believed industrialized societies needed practical education rather than a classical education.

Hegel influenced William Torrey Harris, the eminent educator. Harris bridged 18th Century utilitarianism and 20th Century pragmatism as he included both the arts and manual training in the public high school curriculum. This line of thought (pursued by Dewey and Harris) became known as the Progressive Education Movement.

The Common Schools

.From colonial times until the early 1800s, schools in the U.S. were private. Free, non-sectarian Common Schools (the forerunner of Public Schools) were first established in Massachusetts in 1821. [3] In 1840, the first national census found that 1.8 million girls between five and fifteen and 1.88 million boys attended Common Schools. Most school teachers were men who later became clergymen or lawyers. However, after 1840, female teachers rapidly replaced male teachers; communities chose women primarily because they were willing to teach for one-third of the men’s salary. Since these teachers usually had completed no more than the eighth grade (the maximum of the students they were

teaching), many communities, beginning with Massachusetts in 1839, formed schools to provide teachers with better, more advanced education. After 1865, high schools proliferated. Education offered utilitarian studies not classical studies, thanks to Harris. By the end of the 19th Century, public secondary schools outnumbered private secondary schools. All of this Sturm und Drang is superbly discussed by the eminent historian Lawrence A. Cremin in his book Traditions of American Education. [2]

Factors Affecting the Growth of Correspondence Schools

In the early days of the nation, interest in education varied drastically from strong support for public schools in New England to limited support for public and parochial schools in the middle states to almost no support for either from the South. As a result, by 1870, 80% of the nation’s population over 14 years of age could read and write English, although only 2% of adolescents were able to earn a high school diploma. [3]

As has been noted, in the 19th Century, the average American’s view of their future was optimistic. This was bolstered by the acceptance of both philosopher Herbert Spencer’s view that Darwinian evolution guaranteed man’s progress and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s championship of individualism. Though the vast majority of the American public lacked familiarity with these great men’s names and work, they were, however, likely to understand and believe in the simplistic materialistic optimism of novelist Horatio Alger who insisted that anyone could succeed through hard work. Thus, as a result of what might be called Alger’s trickle down philosophy, many Americans were coming to believe that success was within their reach and that the key to that success was education.

Increased interest in learning and self improvement may be seen in the major external factors which facilitated the birth of correspondence schools: public libraries, the lyceum and the Chautauqua, and rural free postal delivery

The Building of Public Libraries

Alhough libraries have existed since antiquity, they generally were not freely accessible to the public. In the United States, by the late 18th Century, subscription libraries circulated books only to their members. In fact, even though the Library of Congress had existed in 1800, up until the latter half of 19th Century, the establishment and funding of public libraries was not considered the proper use of tax money. The growth of public libraries at the turn of the century was bolstered by the efforts of one man. As a boy, wishing to improve himself, the future steel magnate Andrew Carnegie had borrowed books from a local Tradesman’s Subscription Library. In gratitude, and wealthy enough by this time to do it, in 1883, he built a library in his hometown in Scotland, and in 1889, he built the first of the U.S. libraries that he funded in Braddock, Pennsylvania, one of the towns in which he owned a steel mill. Eventually, Carnegie built a total of 1,689 libraries in the United States out of a total of 2,509 worldwide, leading some to dub him the Patron Saint of Libraries. In addition, by the turn of the century, many states had begun building public libraries using their own funds. [4]

It is worth noting that the Carnegie Libraries produced a major innovation: open stacks, which allowed patrons to take books off the shelves themselves. Although taken for granted today, this was a remarkable advance for library patrons who until then had to request librarians to select books for them. Open stacks allowed patrons the freedom to browse and thus discover new books and ideas for themselves. Further, the growth of the public libraries fostered interest in reading and very likely contributed to greater literacy. Readers began to see that a vast world of knowledge was available to them which could result in improving their lives, even though their formal schooling may have been limited. It was only a short step to their discovering new vocational and avocational opportunities through home study schools.

The Development of the Lyceum

In 1826, the first Lyceum (so named for the garden of the Temple of Apollo where Aristotle taught) was begun in Milbury, Massachusetts by Josiah Holbrook. He was a teacher who lectured on science and mechanics to textile workers in an attempt to improve their job performance. In the ensuing years, this educational movement expanded from being purely job-oriented and refocused on more personal self-improvement. [5] Most of the movers and shakers of American society spoke at these later Lyceums. For example, Abraham Lincoln delivered his address, The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838. [6]

The Chautauqua in Adult Education

The Chautauqua Movement, which began a bit later, had similar educational goals, but, as the general public became more literate, its proponents began to advocate reading. The roots of the movement can be traced back to 1856 in Newark, New Jersey, when Dr. John Hayle Vincent and Lewis Miller, both Methodist clergymen, established a course of home study and reading for young ministers who lacked early advantages [7] In 1874, Vincent and Miller began to train church workers at Chautauqua Lake in New York State. These summer courses, which came to be called Chautauquas, were eventually expanded into directed home reading and correspondence courses that covered topics of a general nature. By 1883, The Chautauqua College of Liberal Arts was granting academic degrees authorized by the state of New York. Vincent and Miller developed a four-year-long curriculum, which covered art, science, literature and history, culminating in a series of exams, after which a diploma was awarded. The first class enrolled from 10th August 1878 to 20 November 1878 and consisted of 8,000 students scattered through all the states and territories of the union, and the Dominion of Canada In the late 1800s, the Chautauqua also began to offer correspondence courses year round that did not require students to come to the school in the summer. Instead they read textbooks published by Chutauqua instructors. One of the earliest books, The Chautauqua Course in Physics stated the philosophy behind Chautauqua distance courses: The self-educator . . . regard(s) this book as an assistant in systematizing the information which he . . . already possesses. [8] The Chautauqua students responded by mail.

Early Correspondence Schools

.March 20, 1728 is the date often given to mark the beginning of proprietary correspondence education in the United States because of an advertisement, which appeared on that date in The Boston Gazette. There, one Caleb Phillips offered to teach shorthand by means of weekly letters to any persons in the country desirous to earn this Art, who may, by having the several lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston [9] Unfortunately, there is evidently no record of whether anyone responded, or, if there was a response, there is no record of what was taught or learned. Since the advertisement apparently appeared only once, it seems unlikely there was sufficient demand for Phillips’ services.

It should be noted that in those days, there was a great interest in shorthand because since there were no tape recorders nor dictation machines, it was the only method of recording the spoken word. As the years passed, many different systems of writing shorthand were developed. In 1837, a British citizen, Sir Isaac Pitman, began teaching the principles of the shorthand system he had invented. He asked his students to transcribe Bible passages into Pittman Shorthand on penny post-cards and to exchange them with fellow students who volunteered to read and correct them. Thus, this was a correspondence school of sorts, although the school did not have qualified instructors correct and grade the lessons. Three years after Isaac Pitman’s use of the