Goals of Elementary Schools
Elementary schools in the United States, as in other countries, have
the goals of providing children with fundamental academic skills, basic
knowledge, and socialization strategies. They are key institutions in
instilling a sense of national identity and citizenship in children.
In the United States, elementary schools prepare children to use
language by teaching reading, writing, comprehension, and computation.
Elementary schools worldwide devote considerable time and resources to
teaching reading, decoding, and comprehending the written and spoken
word. The stories and narratives children learn to read are key elements
in political and cultural socialization, the forming of civic
character, and the shaping of civility and behavior. Throughout the
history of American education, the materials used to teach reading
exemplified the nation's dominant values. For example, the New England
Primer, used in colonial schools, stressed Puritanism's religious and
ethical values. Noah Webster's spelling books and readers emphasized
American national identity and patriotism. The McGuffey Readers, widely
used in late nineteenth century schools, portrayed boys and girls who
always told the truth, who worked diligently, and who honored their
fathers and mothers and their country. McGuffey values were reinforced
by the American flag, which hung at the front of elementary classrooms,
flanked by portraits of Presidents Washington and Lincoln. The "Dick and
Jane" readers of the 1930s and 1940s depicted the lifestyle and
behaviors of the dominant white middle class. Contemporary reading books
and materials portray a much more multicultural view of life and
society.
The language of instruction in elementary or primary schools is often
highly controversial in many countries, especially in multilingual
ones. The ability to use the "official" language provides access to
secondary and higher education and entry into professions. In such
multilanguage nations as India, Canada, and Belgium, protracted
controversies have occurred over which language should be the official
one. In the United States, the dominant language of instruction in
public schools has been English. The children of non-English-speaking
immigrants were assimilated into American culture by the imposition of
English through the elementary school curriculum. The later entry of
bilingual education in the United States was an often controversial
educational development, and remains so in the early twenty-first
century.
Along with the development of language competencies, elementary
education prepares children in the fundamental mathematical skills–in
counting, using number systems, measuring, and performing the basic
operations of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Further,
the foundations of science, social science, health, art, music, and
physical education are also taught.
Curriculum and Organization
In the United States at the primary level, the first level of
organization, the curriculum is highly generalized into broad areas such
as language arts or life sciences. It gradually becomes more
specialized at the intermediate and upper grade levels into more
specific subjects. Because of the generality of the elementary
curriculum, especially at the primary and intermediate levels, there is
likely to be a greater emphasis on methods and styles of teaching in
elementary schools in the United States than in primary schools in other
countries. For example, U.S. teachers, in their professional
preparation and classroom practices, are more likely to emphasize the
process of learning, inquiry skills, and social participation than
teachers in other countries. Instruction in many other countries tends
to be more oriented to specific skills and subjects. While elementary or
primary classrooms in the United States and in other countries are
likely to be self-contained, the American teacher generally has more
autonomy and is not concerned with visitations by outside government
inspectors.
The typical U.S. elementary school curriculum is organized around
broad fields such as language arts, social studies, mathematics, and the
sciences. The essential strategy in this approach is to integrate and
correlate rather than departmentalize areas of knowledge. Curricular
departmentalization often begins earlier in some other countries such as
Japan, China, and India than in the United States.
The language arts, a crucial curricular area, includes reading,
handwriting, spelling, listening, and speaking. It includes the reading
and discussing of stories, biographies, and other forms of children's
literature. Here, the U.S. emphasis on reading and writing is replicated
in other countries. The methods of teaching language, however, vary. In
the United States, the teaching of reading is often controversial. Some
teachers and school districts prefer phonics; others use the whole
language approach or a combination of several methods such as phonics
and guided oral reading.
Social studies, as a component of the U.S. elementary curriculum,
represents a fusion and integration of selected elements of history,
geography, economics, sociology, and anthropology. It often uses a
gradual, step-by-step method of leading children from their immediate
home, family, and neighborhood to the larger social and political world.
While the U.S. approach to social education has been subject to
frequent redefinition and reformulation, its defenders argue that the
integration of elements of the various social sciences is a more
appropriate way to introduce children to society than a strictly
disciplinary approach. Critics, some of them educators from other
countries, argue that American students lack the structured knowledge of
place that comes from the systematic teaching of geography as a
separate discipline or the sense of chronology that comes from the study
of history.
Like social studies, science in the elementary curriculum consists of
the teaching of selected and integrated concepts and materials from the
various natural and physical sciences rather than a focus on the
specific sciences. Frequently, science teaching will stress the life and
earth sciences by way of field trips, demonstrations, and hands-on
experiments. Critics contend that the elementary science curriculum in
the United States is too unstructured and does not provide an adequate
foundational base of knowledge. Defenders contend, however, that it is
more important for students to develop a sense of science as a process
and mode of inquiry than to amass scientific facts.
The main part of the elementary curriculum is completed by
mathematics, with an emphasis on basic computational skills–addition,
subtraction, multiplication, division, measuring, and graphing. The
curriculum also includes health concepts and practices, games, safety,
music, art, and physical education and fitness, which involves the
development of motor skills.
As children in the United States progress from the primary to the
intermediate grades, the emphasis on reading continues but changes from
stories to more informational narratives. The goal is to develop
students' interpretive skills as well as to continue to polish the basic
decoding skills related to mechanics and comprehension that were
stressed in the primary grades. The broad fields of the
curriculum–social studies, mathematics, and science–are pursued but now
become more disciplinary.
Depending on the particular organizational pattern being followed,
the upper grades–six, seven, and eight–offer a more specialized and
differentiated curriculum. Subject matters such as English, literature,
social studies, history, natural and physical sciences, and mathematics
are taught in a more differentiated way. In addition to the more
conventional academic subjects, areas such as vocational, industrial,
home arts, career, sex, and drug abuse prevention education appear,
especially in the upper grades and in junior high and middle schools.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, curriculum is being
shaped by an emphasis on subject-matter competencies in English,
mathematics, and basic sciences. Computer literacy, computerassisted
instruction, and other technologies in school programs reflect the
nation's transition to a high-tech information society.
The Standards Movement
The standards movement, which gained momentum in the late 1990s, has
required more standardized testing in U.S. elementary education.
Standards advocates argue that academic achievement can be best assessed
by using standardized tests to determine whether students are
performing at prescribed levels in key areas such as reading and
mathematics. Most of the states have established standards and require
testing in these areas. Strongly endorsed by U.S. President George W.
Bush, the standards approach was infused into the federal No Child Left
Behind Act of 2001. The act requires that, in order to receive Title I
funds, states and school districts must develop and conduct annual
assessments in reading and mathematics in grades three through eight.
Opponents of the standards movement argue that it is based on a narrow
definition of education that encourages teachers to teach for the test
rather than for the development of the whole child.