We begin this volume on our community of peoples and our education by answering some questions about who we are. We are, first of all, more numerous. Using several panels, we look at population growth over the span of a century. We examine the birth rate, fertility, abortions, and contraceptive practices, and attempt to answer the question: Are we reproducing enough? Fertility is dropping all over…
In answering the question posed in this chapter, we go a bit back and start at a time when we had a total population of under 4 million, in 1790. At that time the entire urban population of the United States was smaller than the population of Amarillo, Texas, is today. Then we lived in the country. Now we live in the cities. In fact, the largest single population concentration is in the suburbs th…
Early in the 20th century, the Census Bureau used to keep track of families with their own households and those who lived with others. Young couples were often living with one of the parents in the ancestral household — the farm. As the century closed out and the Census Bureau took the 2000 census, bureaucrats recorded same-sex partner households for the first time ever. Things have changed …
We are many colors, speak in many tongues, and we come from all over the world. In this chapter we look at some of the indicators of our diversity. We look at our racial and ethnic makeup in somewhat more detail than we could do in Chapter 1, Who Are We? In a way, this chapter continues that theme. In the first four panels we look at racial and linguistic minorities, beginning with an overview, Mi…
In the most recent election, less than half the voting age population cast a vote for president. What persuades us to cast a vote? What keeps us away from the polls? These are some of the questions that will be examined in this chapter. The initial panels in this section will look at the political parties. The two major political parties have rich histories, to be sure. But just who is a Democrat?…
The United States of America: A religiously diverse nation. Or is it? The First Amendment to the Constitution, in part, states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…." We have freedom to choose religions (or no religion) and, in 2001, 76% of us chose some branch of Christianity. Not surprising, since Christianity has t…
How educated are we? The answer seems to change depending upon your point of view. First, we look at graduation rates and educational attainment. We see that the high school graduation rates have soared since the 1870s. And, although rates have fallen off in the last 30 years of the 20th Century, by 2000, the percentage of graduates was the highest it had been since 1960. The number of college stu…
The number of teachers has been increasing since the 1870s. So has the number of students. Pupil-teacher ratios have fallen considerably in the last 130 years, suggesting that the number of teachers is increasing at a faster rate than is the number of students. Who are these teachers? Most of them are women. In the 1870s, the ratio of female to male teachers was 1.6 to 1. In 1996, the ratio increa…
Few Americans would argue against the desirability of a publicly funded education for every child. In fact, most state constitutions guarantee an education, and they use phrases like "equal," "appropriate," "uniform," and "thorough and efficient" to describe the type of education every child should receive. Despite the loftiness of the states' intentions, there have always been inequities in the f…
In this great country, children of every race, class, ethnic background, or handicap can get a primary and secondary education free of charge. It used to be that the overwhelming majority of parents considered our public schools quite good enough. This is not the case anymore. America's schools, especially those in our largest cities, are branded failures, and the public education system is underg…
For decades parents and educators have sought ways to reverse a perceived decline in the quality of America's public schools and to boost the academic achievement of American schoolchildren. The education reform movement gained momentum with the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, a book that called American schools so mediocre that the economic future of the country was in danger. A more recent…
The second half of the twentieth century saw explosive growth in the number of people attending college, the number of educational institutions built to accommodate them, and the cost of a college education. The media continually remind us that the price of a college education is going up and up. At the same time, the college degree becomes ever more desirable. Parents and young people see the deg…
In this final chapter, we take a look a students with special needs and gifts and some issues in education — single-sex education, parental involvement, and the commercialization of the classroom. The first two panels deal with special education. There are some 6 million children in our schools who require special attention. A portion of these children are retarded, have hearing or other imp…
