Elementary and Secondary Education

Abstract

It is stated that the typical public school on the eve of the Civil War was a one-room structure with one teacher. After the decline of the common schools during the Civil War, public education again appeared on the rise. National Normal University in Lebanon, Ohio, had an impact on the development of normal school education in Kentucky. Public school education in Kentucky made advances as well as the occasional missteps in the late nineteenth century. The public high school in Kentucky followed the national trend growing out of the development of the graded school in urban areas. After the implementation of the 1891 constitution, education in Kentucky made little progress in the 1890s. Kentuckians slowly began to embrace the major national curriculum changes of the late nineteenth century. The chapter also describes the state of education in the Commonwealth of Kentucky at the turn of the twentieth century. There was hope for better things in the new century because a groundswell of opinion was urging improved teacher education via annual institutes and public normal schools.