SAT II US History : Representative Viewpoints in U.S. Social History from 1790 to 1898
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Example Questions
Example Question #41 : U.S. Social History
Which individual had a tremendous influence on public education in the United States, starting with this his/her actions as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, where he/she increased state spending on schools, lengthened the school year, divided the students into grades, and introduced standardized textbooks?
Maria Montessori
Horace Greeley
Rudolf Steiner
John Dewey
Horace Mann
Horace Mann
Horace Mann served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate before his appointment as the Massachusetts secretary of education. Mann went on to the U.S. House of Representatives, promoting an agenda of public education and "normal schools" to train teachers. Much of the North reformed its schools along the lines dictated by Horace Mann, and free public schools spread throughout the region. The South, however, made little progress in public education, partly owing to its low population density and a general indifference toward progressive reforms. Mann developed six main principles regarding public education and its troubles: (1) Citizens cannot maintain both ignorance and freedom; (2) This education should be paid for, controlled, and maintained by the public; (3) This education should be provided in schools that embrace children from varying backgrounds; (4) This education must be nonsectarian; (5) This education must be taught using tenets of a free society; and (6) This education must be provided by well-trained, professional teachers.
Example Question #41 : U.S. Social History
Which of the following best describes the attitude of Nativists towards the influx of immigrants at the turn of the Twentieth Century?
Immigration should be heavily capped, and those arriving from places outside of Western Europe should be refused entry
All new immigrants should be offered economic incentives to settle the Western territories and states to help fulfill Manifest Destiny, and to ensure those existing communities in the East were not put in jeopardy
It was the responsibility of the government to provide financial assistance to newly-arrived Immigrants
Immigrants will work for lower wages and will not adhere to strikes, therefore weakening the position of the existing American working and lower-middle classes
It was the duty of all Native-born Americans to provide help and economic assistance to arriving immigrants
Immigrants will work for lower wages and will not adhere to strikes, therefore weakening the position of the existing American working and lower-middle classes
Nativism, a movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s, was founded on anti-immigrant feeling. Many Americans felt that the arrival of the poor and disenfranchised from other countries would spell trouble for the working classes forcing them to compete and thus lowering the wages that they could expect to receive. Most Nativists did not expect immigration to fully cease, but desired to ensure that those granted immigration would be useful to the future prosperity of America. One product of this was the implementation of a literacy test to test whether arriving immigrants could read and write.
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