It is always interesting to find out information about your hometown. For this weeks blog I decided to write about an article that I found on the Kansas City Public School District website. The exact web address of the article ishttp://www.kckps.k12.ks.us/disthistory/pdf%20files/juniorhighs-kansascity-1928.pdf. The article is titled The Junior High Schools of Kansas City, Kansas by R.L. Lyman. This article originally featured in the School Review, Vol. XXXVI, No.3 printed March 1928.
In this article Lyman focused mainly on middle schools with in the Kansas City, KS Wyandotte County area. Lyman included facts stating some of the factors that affect middle schools in this area. Some of the factors Lyman mentioned were the meat packing industry as well as other job opportunities. The part of the article that I really found interesting is the section about Northwest and Northeast Junior High Schools. Northwest was built in 1924 and is still in use today, while Northeast was built at the same timed but closed in 1977 due to desegregation laws. The two buildings followed the same architectural design and cost about the same to build. The Schools are only located about 3 miles apart, however Northwest was built for white students and Northeast was built for students of color. One thing I found interesting was that Northeast didn’t close until 1977, when Brown vs. Board occurred in 1954.
Other interesting facts that Lyman brought up in the article was the idea of grouping students by ability and the concept of preparing students for life after high school. As a student in the Elementary Education program at the University of Kansas, I have become familiar with the concept of ability grouping. As I read this article I noticed that the reasoning behind ability grouping is still the same in 2008 as it was in 1928. The idea is basically to simply cater to the learning needs of each student. The Concept of preparing student for life after high school has been an on-going situation. Some people belief that the purpose of the public school district is prepare students to become overall good citizens while others believe that public schools should prepare students for college. From what I observed by reading this article, schools in 1928 were geared more towards preparing students to become overall good citizens or for trade schools. I believe this to be true as evidenced by electives classes such as home decorating and sewing being offered. Such electives are rarely seen in the Kansas City, KS Public school District today because of education reform acts such as “First Things First” or “No Child left behind”.
Overall I really enjoyed reading this article and learning more information about my hometown.
