and to academic college entrance standards and examinations. Such tests, they said, did not take into account the diverse backgrounds of students who belonged to ethnic minorities and whose culture was therefore different from that of the white middle-class student. Whites and blacks alike also wanted a curriculum that touched more closely on contemporary social problems and teaching methods that recognized their existence as individual human beings rather than as faceless robots competing for grades. Alarmed by the helplessness and hopelessness of the urban ghetto schools, educators began to insist on curricula and teaching methods flexible enough to provide for differences in students' social and ethnic backgrounds. In this way, egalitarianism entered into the education system. Rather than keeping whites and blacks segregated in the schools, egalitarianists provided a way for the two groups to co-exist equally. In this case, the standards were raised instead of lowered in order to promote this new equality. Previously, whites and blacks studied on very different levels. Unfortunately, blacks were not given the same opportunities as whites were... and they did not receive the attention needed to improve the environment in which they studied. Things changed, however, when egalitarianists raised the standards to promote equality. Clearly, the American education system has changed drastically over the years. From one-room schoolhouses to acres of college campus... from Pestalozzi to Dewey... from simple religious studies to graduate programs, education has been influenced by many different factors, such as egalitarianism, wisdom of the heart, and most importantly, practicality. "Necessity is the mother of invention", they say... Just as practicality is the mother of educational reform....
