Comparing and Contrasting on School as a Social Engineer

Boostrom
EDUC 173
26 January 2012
Comparing and Contrasting on School as a Social Engineer
Throughout the school system in America there is a discrepancy in how teachers go about teaching. Should they try to assist children on the emotional journey of growing up by acting like a surrogate parent and a social worker or should they leave well enough alone? The following represents how three quotations from our course readings agree and disagree with this idea.
Philip Freneau thought the idea of being a nanny as well as a teacher preposterous. “…that it is expected the young gentlemen will be at all times under your eye, and that whenever they think proper to go a shooting, swimming, or elsewhere, you must attend them for fear of accidents... And her dear little lambs, may be led, but not drove…” -Philip Freneau (Cohen 25). Philip Freneau was signed up for the job of a private tutor, which he believed to be a position of high importance. He believed his time spent baby sitting five children was wasted. He had no wishes of helping the youngsters along the emotional path to enlightenment, therefore, an agreement with MacKinnon’s statement. Freneau thought his entire experience with the Bunscooten’s was laughable. This explained the reason he wrote a satirical journal entry about them, while the other two entries try to refute MacKinnon’s points about not having overly caring teachers in the school system.
Beecher disagrees with MacKinnon’s statement with this quote. “The simple fact that a teacher succeeds in making a child habitually accurate and thorough in all the lessons of school, may induce mental habits that will have a controlling influence through life.” -Catharine E. Beecher (Fraser 58). Here she shows that by teachers leading exemplary lives their pupils will soon follow in their foot steps. The quote continues. “It is true that mismanagement and indulgence at home may counteract all the good influences of school; and the faithful discharge of parental duty may counteract, to some extent, the bad influences of school; but this does not lessen the force of these considerations.” Here Beecher disagrees with MacKinnon by stating how teachers do act as surrogate parents by being able to counter the bad things that happen at home and, in turn, the parents can counter the bad things at school. Each teacher and parent individually acting as a countering agent against the negative affect of the other, therefore rendering both as influential as the other in the emotional development of the child.
The final quote against MacKinnon deals with letting children discover beautiful things in their path of knowledge. Therefore, opening the doors to their inner poetic beauty which can only be coaxed out through learning. “I should labor to make my explanation and illustration understand their subject, and get them warmed into it, by making them see its beauties and its advantages.” -Emma Hart Willard (Cohen 45). Emma Willard is letting knowledge blossom into its fullest understanding by teaching children with a gentle hand focused on understanding fully and being able to relate to their subject. Through the focus on her students, almost mother like in nature, Willard completely counteracts MacKinnon’s ideals and focuses on nurturing her children socially and emotionally.
The two women discussed in this aspect serve as antitheses of MacKinnon’s view of schooling. They nurture children in a surrogate mother way. While Freneau agrees with MacKinnon’s ideals and wants nothing to do with the upbringing with children.





















Work Cited
Cohen, Rosetta Marantz., and Samuel Scheer. The Work of Teachers in America: A Social History through Stories. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.
Fraser, James W. The School in the United States: A Documentary History. New York: Routledge, 2010.