Oral History, American Teachers and a Social History of Schooling: an emerging agenda

Abstract

This study provides an overview of how oral history has enriched twentieth century American educational history. Hopefully it will provide a framework to analyse the historical and social context of schooling in other settings. First, it focuses on teachers’ lives, stressing the primary role of gender in ‘selecting’ teaching as an occupation, and briefly examines the impact of teacher training. Second, it relates classroom experiences, such as daily routines, ideological conformity, racial segregation and scientific management, through instructors’ eyes in an effort to reconstruct teacher and classroom culture. Third, it touches on how teachers’ lives and work intersected, revealing the complex experiences and conflicts of female instructors. This study relies on a synthetic approach and taps urban, small town and rural experiences through a comprehensive oral history review—by no means exhaustive but certainly illustrative. It couples this with some original research. Finally, in an attempt to convey a social history of American schooling, this analysis, as much as possible, allows teachers to speak for themselves.