April 23, 2012 • 29 mins
In this episode, Caroline and Cristen look back on the history of U.S. public education and the Progressive Era. PTA began with the 1897 formation of the National Congress of Mothers. So what's the difference between the PTA and PTOs? Tune in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen, and today we're
(00:21):
talking about how there is so much more to the
PTA than meets the I. You might assume that all
they do is hold bake sales, as the title implies,
there is so much more to these parent groups than
just that. And the reason I wanted to talk about
these groups is because in our podcast that we did
before on the Foster Care System, we sort of touched
(00:43):
on how these groups in the progressive air I got
their start. There were a lot of women in big cities,
for instance, who wanted to help uplift the immigrant population.
But it wasn't just that. There was more to it.
They wanted to help the children of these immigrants learn
how to be proper quote unquote Americans and get them
(01:04):
off the streets and out of factories. And so there
was a large push by women in these big cities
to sort of fight for the rights of these people,
for better for worse, to help them, help them be
the kind of Americans that they thought they should be. Yeah.
And one of the main organizations that we brought up
in the foster Care episode that will also touch on
(01:26):
in our episode on on the p t A is
the Children's Aid Society, which was founded in eighteen fifty
three by social reformers UM. And this is coming where
we're right UM on the heels of the progressive era,
which starts in nineteen hundred. So Children Aid Society gets
started in the eighteen fifties UM, and in eighteen sixty
(01:50):
three it establishes a forerunner to parent teacher organizations in
which teachers are helping mothers learn better ways to care
for their family. And as we'll talk about more there,
UM starts to be a bigger push for legislation on
state levels for mother's pensions, specifically to help out UM
widowed women, single mothers, because there is this notion that
(02:15):
actually evolved in the prior century that the mother child
relationship is crucial for a healthy household and UM family development.
And that comes directly out of enlightenment theory UM from
John Locke and Russseau, because before that the fathers and
(02:37):
the family actually had more of a control over the
children's education because we were talking about a grarian society.
Men were home more, they were the heads of the
household and had more purview over the kids learning and
religious education as well. But then in the seventeen fifties
and of course going into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
(02:58):
that relationship of the mother and the children really becomes
that paramount uh family dynamic. And I do think it's
interesting that the precursor to the National PTA and General
PTO groups, it was really the focus was on teaching
parents how to be better parents. At this time, you know,
you can save children's lives through better hygiene, you can
(03:21):
teach them about this and that so that they're not
using their little hands and factories. You know, keep your
children in school and they can be more successful in life.
And all of these, um, all of these social pushes
were really led by women. And I think it's interesting
to point out that, you know how strongly women were
(03:43):
involved in some of these social movements because they couldn't vote.
So you know, as we talked about in our Women
as Peacekeeper podcast about women agitating for peace on the
sidelines traditionally, well, it was the same kind of thing
before they achieved the vote here in a Merica in
they were pushing for social reform sort of from the sidelines,
(04:06):
and they ended up winning suffrage in local school school
board elections before they actually won the right to vote
for the president. Right. The National Education Association was among
one of the first civil society organizations in which women
occupied positions of authority. And this isn't something that we
can go into great detail on this podcast, but this
(04:27):
is one of the reasons why teaching becomes such a
female dominated profession because it's one of the first arenas
open to women from the more administrative sidelines and also
from um professional opportunities as well. Yeah, and plus there
was the whole view that, um, you know, women are
mothers and mothers are teachers, and so they kind of
(04:49):
had this view of women and teachers um being interchangeable
and women being able to provide the most stable education
for a lot of these young children. And there's also
a big push from states and local districts as well
to educate children to make sure that kids are um
(05:10):
getting a decent education even if their parents might not
be wealthy enough to send them to private schools. We
have the establishment starting in Massachusetts of public education systems,
and that spreads throughout the country. Um. And and the
reason why a lot of this happens is not necessarily
because of the virtue of wanting all kids to be
able to read. But really it traces back to the
(05:32):
industrial revolution and low wage child labor and then adult
men losing their jobs because these kids can work for
cheaper and so you have you know, little ones in
the factory. Adults getting frustrated about that, forming trade unions
that then put political pressure to enforce things like compulsory
(05:54):
education and truancy laws to get those kids first out
of the factories and then off of the streets and
into schools. So for better for worse, their efforts paid off,
I think. Um, but yeah, as as Kristen pointed out,
I mean, a lot of these women entered the teaching
profession and um, the advocacy of of schooling for young
(06:15):
kids because a lot of other professions were close to them,
professions such as law, medicine, and theology. And then there
was that whole blue collar thing being inconsistent with notions
of femininity, so teaching seemed like a middle ground as
far as spears go, Like social spheres. And then for
the women who didn't necessarily need to or want to
(06:37):
pursue more professional careers in education, these upper and middle
class white women to be more specific, really clung to
a lot of social causes during and leading up to
the Progressive era. Yeah, during this time, these college educated
women took to association building as PBS called it. They
(06:59):
have an excellent section on the Progressive Era and the
women at activists of this time. Um and they said that,
you know, as these women were barred from from more
professional careers, or as Kristen pointed out, maybe they just
weren't pursuing them, um and they but they still wanted
to be a part of the process. They got involved
in things like settlement houses, which was where they would
(07:21):
bring immigrant women to learn certain skills like knitting or whatever,
to to basically to help you learn what being a
proper American and knitter is all about. And so they
were sort of, like we said before, working outside of
the formal electoral structure, and they exerted, they really exerted
during this time pressure on elected officials regarding social policies.
(07:43):
But we should back up a little bit because this
is you know, that's during the full swing of the
progressive era, and we should talk about what happened at
the end of the nineteenth century, which is basically the
purpose of this podcast. Exactly eighteen nineties seven is the
year that the National Congress of Mothers and later the
(08:04):
National Congress of Parents and Teachers was formed by two women,
Alice McLane Bernie and Phoebe Apperson Hearst and Phoebe Apperson
Hirst is the wife was she's dead now was the
wife of George Hurst, the very wealthy businessman who they
were the parents of William Randolph thank you exactly, just
(08:26):
just a little bit of trivia, but yeah, these women
met in and that is when they held the first
Mother's Congress. It's the gathering of two thousand people, not
just women and not just mothers. There were two thousand
various types of people who met in Washington, d c.
To basically get acquainted with all of these issues that
(08:46):
this group would be fighting for, right because Bernie was
especially concerned that there wasn't enough literature to guide and
educate mothers because you again, uh, well, you know, you
have to remember that this issue of the role of
the mother in the home and educating the children at
the home and creating a relationship between public schools and
(09:07):
the home was so important because this was a major
shift away from schooling inside the home, which had been
the standard for so long. Right and right away, right
out of the gate, this was a national organization, and
I don't I didn't really realize that before doing research
for this episode. I just assumed that PTA's started as
(09:27):
general parent teacher groups and then grew into something more national.
But we're right off the bat their national organization, and
in nineteen one they established national dues of five cents,
so reaching deep into your pockets, those five cents, I've
been five cents was still a pretty penny, yeah, or
nickel or whatever. Within just the first several years of organizing,
(09:50):
they had organized local parent teacher associations. They had advocated
for more adequate marriage, divorce and child labor laws, published
booklets on sex ed so there, you know, at the
forefront of that, and they formed committees on child hygiene
and juvenile court and probation work. All of this just
up until nineteen o nine, So they're doing a lot
of work in their first ten years or so. Yeah,
(10:11):
by nineteen sixteen, I was surprised by this fact. By
nineteen sixteen, the National Congress was pushing for and why
state National Congress, I mean the mother's Congress, not the
US Congress was pushing for sprinkler systems and fire escapes
and schools. Yes, thinking ahead, and over the years, the
National Pta would take credit for things like creation of
(10:32):
kindergarten classes, child labor laws as you mentioned, public health service,
hot lunch programs, juvenile justice systems, and mandatory immunization. One
big thing that they took a stand on that Krista
mentioned earlier is mother's pensions. And in nineteen eleven, which
is the year that Illinois became the first state to
enact a mother's pension law, the National Congress voted to
(10:53):
work for mothers pension laws in every state. And these
laws basically provided pension payments that would allow mothers who
had been widowed or abandoned to continue to exert moral
influence over their children in the home, with the philosophy
being that children are better off with their mothers than
an orphanage is, and if you give mothers money, it
lets them stay home and provide that feminine motherly influence
(11:15):
that assure insures that the child will grow up healthy.
And then in nineteen sixteen, the National Congress President Hannah
Kent Scoff wrote that mother's pensions were necessary because many
children had been driven into the ranks of wage earners
before they were physically able to do the tasks required
of them, which makes sense if we're talking about UM
(11:37):
the you know, the Industrial Revolution and the problems with
child labor back then. UM and because of that, they
would deprive him a chance to receive a proper education.
And part of that education too, that we've both touched on,
is this idea of the melting pot. During this time,
there's a huge influx of UM immigrants into the United States.
(11:58):
And while some of the motivations are a little questionable
because UM, these are a lot of upper class white
women who are a lot of whom are concerned about
people who look different from themselves coming into society and
wanting to maintain some kind of order in schools were
a way of doing that, separating people into grades and
(12:22):
you know, sending them all into the same place, giving
them a uniform curriculums, all assimilating them into this new
and rapidly urbanizing and changing society right, and as deb
Reward points out in her book The White Welfare State,
which basically talks about race issues in America the history
of American welfare, she says that from the get go,
the primary actors in this mother's pension movement were women,
(12:45):
particularly these women's organizations, and she points out that members
of these groups claim that they were the true experts
on family policy, not doctors, are social workers, so that
they should be more involved in the process. Yeah, and
mother's pensions which were in extension of widows pensions or
something that was difficult for legislators to say no to.
(13:07):
Because even today we hear politicians talking about how they
advocate on behalf of women. This goes back very far
in our political history. And Kristen mentioned Hannah Kent Shop
earlier and who wrote in nineteen sixteen essay basically addressing
the group's responsibilities, and she talks about, like you said,
how an organized school system is really the avenue for
(13:30):
providing home education for parents, and it wasn't until this
group form this National Congress of Mothers and parent teacher
associations that, uh, it really kind of filtered it all
down and enabled parents to learn as much as they can,
and she she goes into a little bit of the
history and talks about how after the National Congress established
(13:53):
headquarters in Washington, state branches were established and in nineteen
o two they started establishing child labor canmities to advocate
against the eppoyment of young kids in minds and factories,
and they also serve to educate mothers about hygiene, care
and feeding of babies and how that would be able
to save more children's lives. So it seems like the
(14:13):
roots of the p t A go back to educating
mother and children outside of school. But then we have
the major shift after nine women UM, when the right
to vote, they drop mothers from that title and it
becomes the National Congress of Parent Teacher Associations and the
(14:36):
focus shifts more to education outside the home, actually in
the schools. And already having that headquarters set up in Washington,
d C. You have the you know, the basis of
now what is a very powerful lobbying force. UM. Matthew
Crimson and his book Building the Invisible Orphanage of prehistory
(14:58):
of the American welfare system writes about how getting the
vote in didn't bring an end too women's political activism,
but it just changed the nature of their participation. Um,
there's the shift from maternalist reformers as he calls them,
to professional educators. And this is similar to the way
that many of activists, many of the activists causes in
the progressive era, ended up being taken into the bureaucratic
(15:20):
fauld So they succeeded and getting a lot of their
concerns recognized and taken up on a national level, but
it's sort of separated those activists from the things that
they have been fighting for. And the PTA is a
little different in that respect because they still are the major,
the major organization fighting for this stuff. But what about
(15:45):
the p t O Because people who are members of
p t O s might disagree with that statement. They
might say that an ad when it comes to a
local level, the p t A is not where it's
a m. Yeah, this is coming from Tim Sullivan. He's
the founder of PTO Today, which is a nonprofit that
(16:06):
provides resources and information to parent teacher groups that are
independent from p t A s. And he basically specifies
that PTOs are independent groups that don't pay dues to
a national organization or focus on issues really outside of
their own school or town, and they don't have lobbyists
like the PTA does. Now. It came as a surprise
(16:26):
to me in studying this is that the p t
A numbers wise is not as powerful as it used
to be, and largely in because of the PTO and
groups on the local level realizing that they might not
need to pay dues to a national organization in order
to get things done for the school that their child
(16:48):
is going to. UM and and just for an idea
of how those numbers have dropped, the PTA reached a
record high membership in nineteen sixty two with twelve point
one million members, and in the early nineteen eighties that
membership had dropped to about five million. And UM, we
should note that desegregation in the sixth season seventies was
(17:11):
a major reason for the drop in PTA participation because
of busting UM children from two different neighborhoods in order
to increase the racial diversity of schools, which sent parents
up in arms but also scattered a lot of those
those PTA groups. Yeah, one of the one of the
(17:32):
main issues then and now is that people are some
people are uncomfortable with paying dues to a national organization
and having some of their money leave the school, and
also the fact that the PTA takes stances on things
that not all parents and not all school districts agree
with UM, and sometimes that advocacy work just bother some parents.
(17:53):
And the Associated Press quoted one Georgia father is saying
that you think you're joining a group to support your school,
but your act really joining a quote massive political action committee.
And I think that it's also the stereotype of the
p t A that might turn some parents off or
think that it's not something that would fit their lives. UM.
(18:16):
You know that the PTA was initially founded by middle
and upper class white women. By the nineteen forties and fifties,
it became this community event for housewives, and you talk
about you know, the you know, we're not talking about
bake sales today because they do so much beyond big sales,
but that kind of fundraising that was led primarily by
women who were not working outside of the home. I
(18:38):
think it's a stereotype that has has plagued it up
until today, and especially with the rise of the PTO
as an alternative to the p t A, the national Organization,
the National Parent Teacher Association has been trying to break
away from that stereotype of the organization is something specifically
(19:00):
for UM. You know, upper class women who don't have jobs,
to be blunt about it, right, and they're they're taking
on different tax to try to get people to join
to to increase the ranks of the p t A.
And incoming President Oatha Thornton when he takes over, he'll
be the PTA's first male black president, So that's totally
(19:22):
different from the origins of the PTA back in the
progressive era. And he said that his strategies are encouraging
urban parents to become more involved in their local schools,
expanding outreach to rural schools, and training a whole new
wave of leaders from minority groups. And we should mention
too that the National PTA elected its first male president,
Charles J. Saylor in two thousand nine. And UM the
(19:44):
group has gotten together in recent years with the National
Center for Fathering to try to get more men, specifically engaged,
because there are plenty of studies that have found that
the more engaged parents are with their children's schools, typically
as a correlation with kids um improved academic achievement. Yeah,
(20:05):
this has brought up in a New York Times article
talking about men's involvement in the p t A, and
they cited two thousand nine study by the National Congress
of Parents and Teachers There you Go and the National
Center for Fathering. They found that five hundred ninety out
of a thousand fathers surveyed nationwide said they attended school
parent meetings, which is up from four hundred and seventy
(20:25):
out of a thousand a decade earlier. And so the
New York Times is looking into why more men are
getting involved, and the reasons are kind of interesting. It's
it's it's multi facim it. I'll say that. They point
out that more women have more demanding jobs, more men
are under employed during the recession, and there's more shared
parenting responsibilities going on. But they also bring up the
(20:48):
issue of the professionalization of the PTA, which could be
construed as a good thing or could be construed as
kind of offensive to the women who have historically run
the PTA. It's a little snarky, I'll I'll go ahead
and say it. Uh yeah. The New York Times points
out that, you know, women are coming in with more
advanced degrees and all of this job experience managerial experience,
(21:10):
and with that, they're coming into these meetings running them
more like board meetings than big sale organization will get togethers,
which I say, is you know, for for the plenty
of women out there who have raised a lot of
money from brownies and doing plenty of other things. It
was a little bit of a snarky jab on the
part of the New York Times. Yeah, and they say
(21:33):
that this whole professionalization thing makes men more comfortable, which
sounds like, I don't know, make the office nicer, put
out drinks. Let's all just be in madness. I mean,
I know it's not I know it's not to that extent,
but I think it's sort of silly to say that, um,
women being more professional and running companies makes men more
(21:54):
comfortable to join the p t A. I mean, I
think that what we what we can agree on with this,
with this coverage of more men in the p t A,
is that a that is a fantastic thing. Yes, get
more men involved with their children's education, absolutely, and get
more men involved with improving school systems. That totally needs
to happen, especially because state and local governments are running
(22:15):
such major deficits right now and having to close down
schools entirely. UM. And they've found that, you know, the
more people that you get involved, men and women included,
the more of a community voice they have and more
of a local um force they have to every do
everything from get ineffective teachers out to getting more resources in. Yeah,
(22:38):
and there are other types of organizations springing up. There
was a Huffington Post article about parents Unions and how
there's this Los Angeles based nonprofit Parent Revolution that in
helped push a law through giving parents the authority to
force turnarounds at failing failing schools through petitions. And this
is great, but a lot of teachers are saying like, ah, oh,
(23:00):
not everything is the best idea. Not everything that parents
say should be law. Right. Um. The parent trigger laws,
which have also um, I don't know that they've taken effect,
but I know that they have been introduced in a
number of other state legislatures, are pretty controversial. But you know,
it's still the same issue of getting more parents involved
(23:22):
because a number of schools are failing and a lot
of times the most effective voices out there and the
most forceful voices are those parents because they have a
direct interest in their children succeeding UM. And and then
there's the issue two of organizing p t o s
and even UM p t as, although it's harder because
(23:42):
of that financial burden that comes along with it of
having to pay district, state, and national dues, but reaching
out to low income schools, to minority groups, to especially
talking about these these parent groups in California, reaching out
to Spanish speaking parents who might not be particip painting
because of language barriers. There's still so many um sort
(24:04):
of class and race barriers that still carry over from
when the roots of the organization were first formed. And
there are a lot of school districts that either don't
want you to have an independent parent group or who
don't want you to have a p t A. So
it kind of depends on your school district too. So
to me, the most enlightening thing that I learned about
(24:27):
the p t A is that it is certainly not
that stagnant image of of a bake sale of just
women getting together and chatting while their children are in school.
It's it's such a it's still evolving organization. And then
when you think about the p t o s and
then Parent Revolution and other parent groups that are getting involved.
(24:48):
It's the social progressive movement that continues even today, and
it's probably needed even more today than ever before because
of the failure rate and low grades in schools. Absolute
like it can only help to have parents involved at
some level in their kids schools. So tell us are
you are you a p t A member or are
you a PTO member? Or do were you turned off
(25:11):
from the school organization? There are plenty of blog posting
columns out there from teachers or parents, i should say,
and probably teachers who went to a meeting and were
immediately just sort of put off by the whole thing,
and teachers to do p t A s and p
t O s help your make your job easier or
(25:31):
are they a hindrance? There is so much information in
this podcast we kind of had to to gloss over
some things, but I hope to hear from a lot
of you because it is a it's an important topic
that has to do with a lot more than brownies exactly,
So send us your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can direct those letters, and you
(25:51):
can also post stuff on Facebook as well and tweet
us at mom Stuff Podcasts. In the meantime, I've got
an email here on our episode of Yoga from Anne Marie,
and she was writing in specifically about the book we referenced,
The Science of Yoga Risks and Rewards by William J. Broad,
because Broad got a lot of press coverage from this book,
(26:14):
specifically focusing on the risks involved um in that in
that title, and so she writes, h the author of
that book is not anti yoga at all and is
quick to point out the benefits of yoga. He has
don yoga for years and acknowledges his part in his injury.
He's really trying to be accurate and factual about a
topic that seems to be defensively protected when its claims
(26:35):
are challenged. Yoga is not perfect, and it is a
multimillion or billion dollar industry, so its proponents are not
necessarily going to be objective when their livelihoods are scientifically examined.
She also recommends listening to the NPR interview with William J.
Broad that shows more of his point of view, and
she also mentions that hot yoga does not sweat out toxins.
(26:57):
The whole toxin removal crisis pretty much all exaggeration. One
hint is that while people will claim removal of toxins,
they usually don't say specifically what these toxins are supposed
to be. Yeah, I mean, I have no idea. All
I know is that I was sweating out sweat, lots
of it, maybe because it's so exhausting. When you sweat
out so many things, you imagine that something terrible must
(27:18):
have exited your body, exactly like demons in. Okay, and
I have an email from Katie. We are We're still
getting a lot of response about our potty politics episode.
I love them. So many squatting debate I know, and
and here's one of them. Sort of Um, she said,
I just wanted to share something that I realized about myself.
(27:40):
You made the comment that teaching young girls to squat
while urinating was the major segregation between the sexes growing up,
although that was us quoting someone else. Yes, yes, that
was in literature that we were quoting. Um. She said
that I was recently in a relationship and I was
ashamed to learn that my boyfriend at the time would pee.
He's sitting down. I know his reasons for doing this
(28:03):
are likely because he works on a ship, and it's
just easier, But I have to say it really upset me.
I felt less attracted to him and hated the idea
that other people might found out find out that he
did this. I know that this was just some really weird,
some subconscious thing that had nothing to do with who
he was or what he did, but it just bothered me.
I find nothing wrong with squatting to p for women. Sure,
(28:24):
if someone were to figure out some really great new
way to pee, I'm sure I would jump on board.
But I have to question this ideal that everyone should
be the same. I am all for the equal rights
women should have their own bathrooms, and as for transgendered people,
I would like to think that we were heading to
a world where if someone identifies themselves as a woman
or a man, then they can just use those bathrooms.
There is no secret to it. Everyone excreets to get
(28:46):
over it. I just want to get across it. Whether
you're a woman or a person who identifies as a woman,
it's all right to be feminine because there are so
many ways to be feminine that there is no way
you can go wrong if you just stick to what
you believe in. And yet the you of being ashamed
of of a guy peeing while sitting down. I'm raising
(29:07):
a wary eyebrow. Any any piece sitter mails out there,
I want to hear from you. I want to know
what you think about that letter. Mom Stuff at discovery
dot com is where you can send all of your thoughts,
and you can also hit us up on Facebook and
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and of course you
can read up on a lot of education policy over
(29:28):
at our home website, how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how stup Work staff as we explore
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(29:55):
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen, and today we're
(00:21):
talking about how there is so much more to the
PTA than meets the I. You might assume that all
they do is hold bake sales, as the title implies,
there is so much more to these parent groups than
just that. And the reason I wanted to talk about
these groups is because in our podcast that we did
before on the Foster Care System, we sort of touched
(00:43):
on how these groups in the progressive air I got
their start. There were a lot of women in big cities,
for instance, who wanted to help uplift the immigrant population.
But it wasn't just that. There was more to it.
They wanted to help the children of these immigrants learn
how to be proper quote unquote Americans and get them
(01:04):
off the streets and out of factories. And so there
was a large push by women in these big cities
to sort of fight for the rights of these people,
for better for worse, to help them, help them be
the kind of Americans that they thought they should be. Yeah.
And one of the main organizations that we brought up
in the foster Care episode that will also touch on
(01:26):
in our episode on on the p t A is
the Children's Aid Society, which was founded in eighteen fifty
three by social reformers UM. And this is coming where
we're right UM on the heels of the progressive era,
which starts in nineteen hundred. So Children Aid Society gets
started in the eighteen fifties UM, and in eighteen sixty
(01:50):
three it establishes a forerunner to parent teacher organizations in
which teachers are helping mothers learn better ways to care
for their family. And as we'll talk about more there,
UM starts to be a bigger push for legislation on
state levels for mother's pensions, specifically to help out UM
widowed women, single mothers, because there is this notion that
(02:15):
actually evolved in the prior century that the mother child
relationship is crucial for a healthy household and UM family development.
And that comes directly out of enlightenment theory UM from
John Locke and Russseau, because before that the fathers and
(02:37):
the family actually had more of a control over the
children's education because we were talking about a grarian society.
Men were home more, they were the heads of the
household and had more purview over the kids learning and
religious education as well. But then in the seventeen fifties
and of course going into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
(02:58):
that relationship of the mother and the children really becomes
that paramount uh family dynamic. And I do think it's
interesting that the precursor to the National PTA and General
PTO groups, it was really the focus was on teaching
parents how to be better parents. At this time, you know,
you can save children's lives through better hygiene, you can
(03:21):
teach them about this and that so that they're not
using their little hands and factories. You know, keep your
children in school and they can be more successful in life.
And all of these, um, all of these social pushes
were really led by women. And I think it's interesting
to point out that, you know how strongly women were
(03:43):
involved in some of these social movements because they couldn't vote.
So you know, as we talked about in our Women
as Peacekeeper podcast about women agitating for peace on the
sidelines traditionally, well, it was the same kind of thing
before they achieved the vote here in a Merica in
they were pushing for social reform sort of from the sidelines,
(04:06):
and they ended up winning suffrage in local school school
board elections before they actually won the right to vote
for the president. Right. The National Education Association was among
one of the first civil society organizations in which women
occupied positions of authority. And this isn't something that we
can go into great detail on this podcast, but this
(04:27):
is one of the reasons why teaching becomes such a
female dominated profession because it's one of the first arenas
open to women from the more administrative sidelines and also
from um professional opportunities as well. Yeah, and plus there
was the whole view that, um, you know, women are
mothers and mothers are teachers, and so they kind of
(04:49):
had this view of women and teachers um being interchangeable
and women being able to provide the most stable education
for a lot of these young children. And there's also
a big push from states and local districts as well
to educate children to make sure that kids are um
(05:10):
getting a decent education even if their parents might not
be wealthy enough to send them to private schools. We
have the establishment starting in Massachusetts of public education systems,
and that spreads throughout the country. Um. And and the
reason why a lot of this happens is not necessarily
because of the virtue of wanting all kids to be
able to read. But really it traces back to the
(05:32):
industrial revolution and low wage child labor and then adult
men losing their jobs because these kids can work for
cheaper and so you have you know, little ones in
the factory. Adults getting frustrated about that, forming trade unions
that then put political pressure to enforce things like compulsory
(05:54):
education and truancy laws to get those kids first out
of the factories and then off of the streets and
into schools. So for better for worse, their efforts paid off,
I think. Um, but yeah, as as Kristen pointed out,
I mean, a lot of these women entered the teaching
profession and um, the advocacy of of schooling for young
(06:15):
kids because a lot of other professions were close to them,
professions such as law, medicine, and theology. And then there
was that whole blue collar thing being inconsistent with notions
of femininity, so teaching seemed like a middle ground as
far as spears go, Like social spheres. And then for
the women who didn't necessarily need to or want to
(06:37):
pursue more professional careers in education, these upper and middle
class white women to be more specific, really clung to
a lot of social causes during and leading up to
the Progressive era. Yeah, during this time, these college educated
women took to association building as PBS called it. They
(06:59):
have an excellent section on the Progressive Era and the
women at activists of this time. Um and they said that,
you know, as these women were barred from from more
professional careers, or as Kristen pointed out, maybe they just
weren't pursuing them, um and they but they still wanted
to be a part of the process. They got involved
in things like settlement houses, which was where they would
(07:21):
bring immigrant women to learn certain skills like knitting or whatever,
to to basically to help you learn what being a
proper American and knitter is all about. And so they
were sort of, like we said before, working outside of
the formal electoral structure, and they exerted, they really exerted
during this time pressure on elected officials regarding social policies.
(07:43):
But we should back up a little bit because this
is you know, that's during the full swing of the
progressive era, and we should talk about what happened at
the end of the nineteenth century, which is basically the
purpose of this podcast. Exactly eighteen nineties seven is the
year that the National Congress of Mothers and later the
(08:04):
National Congress of Parents and Teachers was formed by two women,
Alice McLane Bernie and Phoebe Apperson Hearst and Phoebe Apperson
Hirst is the wife was she's dead now was the
wife of George Hurst, the very wealthy businessman who they
were the parents of William Randolph thank you exactly, just
(08:26):
just a little bit of trivia, but yeah, these women
met in and that is when they held the first
Mother's Congress. It's the gathering of two thousand people, not
just women and not just mothers. There were two thousand
various types of people who met in Washington, d c.
To basically get acquainted with all of these issues that
(08:46):
this group would be fighting for, right because Bernie was
especially concerned that there wasn't enough literature to guide and
educate mothers because you again, uh, well, you know, you
have to remember that this issue of the role of
the mother in the home and educating the children at
the home and creating a relationship between public schools and
(09:07):
the home was so important because this was a major
shift away from schooling inside the home, which had been
the standard for so long. Right and right away, right
out of the gate, this was a national organization, and
I don't I didn't really realize that before doing research
for this episode. I just assumed that PTA's started as
(09:27):
general parent teacher groups and then grew into something more national.
But we're right off the bat their national organization, and
in nineteen one they established national dues of five cents,
so reaching deep into your pockets, those five cents, I've
been five cents was still a pretty penny, yeah, or
nickel or whatever. Within just the first several years of organizing,
(09:50):
they had organized local parent teacher associations. They had advocated
for more adequate marriage, divorce and child labor laws, published
booklets on sex ed so there, you know, at the
forefront of that, and they formed committees on child hygiene
and juvenile court and probation work. All of this just
up until nineteen o nine, So they're doing a lot
of work in their first ten years or so. Yeah,
(10:11):
by nineteen sixteen, I was surprised by this fact. By
nineteen sixteen, the National Congress was pushing for and why
state National Congress, I mean the mother's Congress, not the
US Congress was pushing for sprinkler systems and fire escapes
and schools. Yes, thinking ahead, and over the years, the
National Pta would take credit for things like creation of
(10:32):
kindergarten classes, child labor laws as you mentioned, public health service,
hot lunch programs, juvenile justice systems, and mandatory immunization. One
big thing that they took a stand on that Krista
mentioned earlier is mother's pensions. And in nineteen eleven, which
is the year that Illinois became the first state to
enact a mother's pension law, the National Congress voted to
(10:53):
work for mothers pension laws in every state. And these
laws basically provided pension payments that would allow mothers who
had been widowed or abandoned to continue to exert moral
influence over their children in the home, with the philosophy
being that children are better off with their mothers than
an orphanage is, and if you give mothers money, it
lets them stay home and provide that feminine motherly influence
(11:15):
that assure insures that the child will grow up healthy.
And then in nineteen sixteen, the National Congress President Hannah
Kent Scoff wrote that mother's pensions were necessary because many
children had been driven into the ranks of wage earners
before they were physically able to do the tasks required
of them, which makes sense if we're talking about UM
(11:37):
the you know, the Industrial Revolution and the problems with
child labor back then. UM and because of that, they
would deprive him a chance to receive a proper education.
And part of that education too, that we've both touched on,
is this idea of the melting pot. During this time,
there's a huge influx of UM immigrants into the United States.
(11:58):
And while some of the motivations are a little questionable
because UM, these are a lot of upper class white
women who are a lot of whom are concerned about
people who look different from themselves coming into society and
wanting to maintain some kind of order in schools were
a way of doing that, separating people into grades and
(12:22):
you know, sending them all into the same place, giving
them a uniform curriculums, all assimilating them into this new
and rapidly urbanizing and changing society right, and as deb
Reward points out in her book The White Welfare State,
which basically talks about race issues in America the history
of American welfare, she says that from the get go,
the primary actors in this mother's pension movement were women,
(12:45):
particularly these women's organizations, and she points out that members
of these groups claim that they were the true experts
on family policy, not doctors, are social workers, so that
they should be more involved in the process. Yeah, and
mother's pensions which were in extension of widows pensions or
something that was difficult for legislators to say no to.
(13:07):
Because even today we hear politicians talking about how they
advocate on behalf of women. This goes back very far
in our political history. And Kristen mentioned Hannah Kent Shop
earlier and who wrote in nineteen sixteen essay basically addressing
the group's responsibilities, and she talks about, like you said,
how an organized school system is really the avenue for
(13:30):
providing home education for parents, and it wasn't until this
group form this National Congress of Mothers and parent teacher
associations that, uh, it really kind of filtered it all
down and enabled parents to learn as much as they can,
and she she goes into a little bit of the
history and talks about how after the National Congress established
(13:53):
headquarters in Washington, state branches were established and in nineteen
o two they started establishing child labor canmities to advocate
against the eppoyment of young kids in minds and factories,
and they also serve to educate mothers about hygiene, care
and feeding of babies and how that would be able
to save more children's lives. So it seems like the
(14:13):
roots of the p t A go back to educating
mother and children outside of school. But then we have
the major shift after nine women UM, when the right
to vote, they drop mothers from that title and it
becomes the National Congress of Parent Teacher Associations and the
(14:36):
focus shifts more to education outside the home, actually in
the schools. And already having that headquarters set up in Washington,
d C. You have the you know, the basis of
now what is a very powerful lobbying force. UM. Matthew
Crimson and his book Building the Invisible Orphanage of prehistory
(14:58):
of the American welfare system writes about how getting the
vote in didn't bring an end too women's political activism,
but it just changed the nature of their participation. Um,
there's the shift from maternalist reformers as he calls them,
to professional educators. And this is similar to the way
that many of activists, many of the activists causes in
the progressive era, ended up being taken into the bureaucratic
(15:20):
fauld So they succeeded and getting a lot of their
concerns recognized and taken up on a national level, but
it's sort of separated those activists from the things that
they have been fighting for. And the PTA is a
little different in that respect because they still are the major,
the major organization fighting for this stuff. But what about
(15:45):
the p t O Because people who are members of
p t O s might disagree with that statement. They
might say that an ad when it comes to a
local level, the p t A is not where it's
a m. Yeah, this is coming from Tim Sullivan. He's
the founder of PTO Today, which is a nonprofit that
(16:06):
provides resources and information to parent teacher groups that are
independent from p t A s. And he basically specifies
that PTOs are independent groups that don't pay dues to
a national organization or focus on issues really outside of
their own school or town, and they don't have lobbyists
like the PTA does. Now. It came as a surprise
(16:26):
to me in studying this is that the p t
A numbers wise is not as powerful as it used
to be, and largely in because of the PTO and
groups on the local level realizing that they might not
need to pay dues to a national organization in order
to get things done for the school that their child
(16:48):
is going to. UM and and just for an idea
of how those numbers have dropped, the PTA reached a
record high membership in nineteen sixty two with twelve point
one million members, and in the early nineteen eighties that
membership had dropped to about five million. And UM, we
should note that desegregation in the sixth season seventies was
(17:11):
a major reason for the drop in PTA participation because
of busting UM children from two different neighborhoods in order
to increase the racial diversity of schools, which sent parents
up in arms but also scattered a lot of those
those PTA groups. Yeah, one of the one of the
(17:32):
main issues then and now is that people are some
people are uncomfortable with paying dues to a national organization
and having some of their money leave the school, and
also the fact that the PTA takes stances on things
that not all parents and not all school districts agree
with UM, and sometimes that advocacy work just bother some parents.
(17:53):
And the Associated Press quoted one Georgia father is saying
that you think you're joining a group to support your school,
but your act really joining a quote massive political action committee.
And I think that it's also the stereotype of the
p t A that might turn some parents off or
think that it's not something that would fit their lives. UM.
(18:16):
You know that the PTA was initially founded by middle
and upper class white women. By the nineteen forties and fifties,
it became this community event for housewives, and you talk
about you know, the you know, we're not talking about
bake sales today because they do so much beyond big sales,
but that kind of fundraising that was led primarily by
women who were not working outside of the home. I
(18:38):
think it's a stereotype that has has plagued it up
until today, and especially with the rise of the PTO
as an alternative to the p t A, the national Organization,
the National Parent Teacher Association has been trying to break
away from that stereotype of the organization is something specifically
(19:00):
for UM. You know, upper class women who don't have jobs,
to be blunt about it, right, and they're they're taking
on different tax to try to get people to join
to to increase the ranks of the p t A.
And incoming President Oatha Thornton when he takes over, he'll
be the PTA's first male black president, So that's totally
(19:22):
different from the origins of the PTA back in the
progressive era. And he said that his strategies are encouraging
urban parents to become more involved in their local schools,
expanding outreach to rural schools, and training a whole new
wave of leaders from minority groups. And we should mention
too that the National PTA elected its first male president,
Charles J. Saylor in two thousand nine. And UM the
(19:44):
group has gotten together in recent years with the National
Center for Fathering to try to get more men, specifically engaged,
because there are plenty of studies that have found that
the more engaged parents are with their children's schools, typically
as a correlation with kids um improved academic achievement. Yeah,
(20:05):
this has brought up in a New York Times article
talking about men's involvement in the p t A, and
they cited two thousand nine study by the National Congress
of Parents and Teachers There you Go and the National
Center for Fathering. They found that five hundred ninety out
of a thousand fathers surveyed nationwide said they attended school
parent meetings, which is up from four hundred and seventy
(20:25):
out of a thousand a decade earlier. And so the
New York Times is looking into why more men are
getting involved, and the reasons are kind of interesting. It's
it's it's multi facim it. I'll say that. They point
out that more women have more demanding jobs, more men
are under employed during the recession, and there's more shared
parenting responsibilities going on. But they also bring up the
(20:48):
issue of the professionalization of the PTA, which could be
construed as a good thing or could be construed as
kind of offensive to the women who have historically run
the PTA. It's a little snarky, I'll I'll go ahead
and say it. Uh yeah. The New York Times points
out that, you know, women are coming in with more
advanced degrees and all of this job experience managerial experience,
(21:10):
and with that, they're coming into these meetings running them
more like board meetings than big sale organization will get togethers,
which I say, is you know, for for the plenty
of women out there who have raised a lot of
money from brownies and doing plenty of other things. It
was a little bit of a snarky jab on the
part of the New York Times. Yeah, and they say
(21:33):
that this whole professionalization thing makes men more comfortable, which
sounds like, I don't know, make the office nicer, put
out drinks. Let's all just be in madness. I mean,
I know it's not I know it's not to that extent,
but I think it's sort of silly to say that, um,
women being more professional and running companies makes men more
(21:54):
comfortable to join the p t A. I mean, I
think that what we what we can agree on with this,
with this coverage of more men in the p t A,
is that a that is a fantastic thing. Yes, get
more men involved with their children's education, absolutely, and get
more men involved with improving school systems. That totally needs
to happen, especially because state and local governments are running
(22:15):
such major deficits right now and having to close down
schools entirely. UM. And they've found that, you know, the
more people that you get involved, men and women included,
the more of a community voice they have and more
of a local um force they have to every do
everything from get ineffective teachers out to getting more resources in. Yeah,
(22:38):
and there are other types of organizations springing up. There
was a Huffington Post article about parents Unions and how
there's this Los Angeles based nonprofit Parent Revolution that in
helped push a law through giving parents the authority to
force turnarounds at failing failing schools through petitions. And this
is great, but a lot of teachers are saying like, ah, oh,
(23:00):
not everything is the best idea. Not everything that parents
say should be law. Right. Um. The parent trigger laws,
which have also um, I don't know that they've taken effect,
but I know that they have been introduced in a
number of other state legislatures, are pretty controversial. But you know,
it's still the same issue of getting more parents involved
(23:22):
because a number of schools are failing and a lot
of times the most effective voices out there and the
most forceful voices are those parents because they have a
direct interest in their children succeeding UM. And and then
there's the issue two of organizing p t o s
and even UM p t as, although it's harder because
(23:42):
of that financial burden that comes along with it of
having to pay district, state, and national dues, but reaching
out to low income schools, to minority groups, to especially
talking about these these parent groups in California, reaching out
to Spanish speaking parents who might not be particip painting
because of language barriers. There's still so many um sort
(24:04):
of class and race barriers that still carry over from
when the roots of the organization were first formed. And
there are a lot of school districts that either don't
want you to have an independent parent group or who
don't want you to have a p t A. So
it kind of depends on your school district too. So
to me, the most enlightening thing that I learned about
(24:27):
the p t A is that it is certainly not
that stagnant image of of a bake sale of just
women getting together and chatting while their children are in school.
It's it's such a it's still evolving organization. And then
when you think about the p t o s and
then Parent Revolution and other parent groups that are getting involved.
(24:48):
It's the social progressive movement that continues even today, and
it's probably needed even more today than ever before because
of the failure rate and low grades in schools. Absolute
like it can only help to have parents involved at
some level in their kids schools. So tell us are
you are you a p t A member or are
you a PTO member? Or do were you turned off
(25:11):
from the school organization? There are plenty of blog posting
columns out there from teachers or parents, i should say,
and probably teachers who went to a meeting and were
immediately just sort of put off by the whole thing,
and teachers to do p t A s and p
t O s help your make your job easier or
(25:31):
are they a hindrance? There is so much information in
this podcast we kind of had to to gloss over
some things, but I hope to hear from a lot
of you because it is a it's an important topic
that has to do with a lot more than brownies exactly,
So send us your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can direct those letters, and you
(25:51):
can also post stuff on Facebook as well and tweet
us at mom Stuff Podcasts. In the meantime, I've got
an email here on our episode of Yoga from Anne Marie,
and she was writing in specifically about the book we referenced,
The Science of Yoga Risks and Rewards by William J. Broad,
because Broad got a lot of press coverage from this book,
(26:14):
specifically focusing on the risks involved um in that in
that title, and so she writes, h the author of
that book is not anti yoga at all and is
quick to point out the benefits of yoga. He has
don yoga for years and acknowledges his part in his injury.
He's really trying to be accurate and factual about a
topic that seems to be defensively protected when its claims
(26:35):
are challenged. Yoga is not perfect, and it is a
multimillion or billion dollar industry, so its proponents are not
necessarily going to be objective when their livelihoods are scientifically examined.
She also recommends listening to the NPR interview with William J.
Broad that shows more of his point of view, and
she also mentions that hot yoga does not sweat out toxins.
(26:57):
The whole toxin removal crisis pretty much all exaggeration. One
hint is that while people will claim removal of toxins,
they usually don't say specifically what these toxins are supposed
to be. Yeah, I mean, I have no idea. All
I know is that I was sweating out sweat, lots
of it, maybe because it's so exhausting. When you sweat
out so many things, you imagine that something terrible must
(27:18):
have exited your body, exactly like demons in. Okay, and
I have an email from Katie. We are We're still
getting a lot of response about our potty politics episode.
I love them. So many squatting debate I know, and
and here's one of them. Sort of Um, she said,
I just wanted to share something that I realized about myself.
(27:40):
You made the comment that teaching young girls to squat
while urinating was the major segregation between the sexes growing up,
although that was us quoting someone else. Yes, yes, that
was in literature that we were quoting. Um. She said
that I was recently in a relationship and I was
ashamed to learn that my boyfriend at the time would pee.
He's sitting down. I know his reasons for doing this
(28:03):
are likely because he works on a ship, and it's
just easier, But I have to say it really upset me.
I felt less attracted to him and hated the idea
that other people might found out find out that he
did this. I know that this was just some really weird,
some subconscious thing that had nothing to do with who
he was or what he did, but it just bothered me.
I find nothing wrong with squatting to p for women. Sure,
(28:24):
if someone were to figure out some really great new
way to pee, I'm sure I would jump on board.
But I have to question this ideal that everyone should
be the same. I am all for the equal rights
women should have their own bathrooms, and as for transgendered people,
I would like to think that we were heading to
a world where if someone identifies themselves as a woman
or a man, then they can just use those bathrooms.
There is no secret to it. Everyone excreets to get
(28:46):
over it. I just want to get across it. Whether
you're a woman or a person who identifies as a woman,
it's all right to be feminine because there are so
many ways to be feminine that there is no way
you can go wrong if you just stick to what
you believe in. And yet the you of being ashamed
of of a guy peeing while sitting down. I'm raising
(29:07):
a wary eyebrow. Any any piece sitter mails out there,
I want to hear from you. I want to know
what you think about that letter. Mom Stuff at discovery
dot com is where you can send all of your thoughts,
and you can also hit us up on Facebook and
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and of course you
can read up on a lot of education policy over
(29:28):
at our home website, how stuff works dot com. Be
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