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The History of Summer School at UNC
by Charly Mann
The University of North Carolina began holding classes in the summer in the late 1870s as crash programs to train teachers. The session was not called summer school, but was labeled as Summer Normals.
When Reconstruction ended, North Carolina's public schools were barely functioning. The state had stopped funding education because the federal government had required that both whites and blacks had to receive the same educational benefits. As a result, by 1877 illiteracy in North Carolina was widespread and the ignorance of the white lower class was considered a potential threat to social order. The legislature decided in 1878 that the University of North Carolina would be the training ground for a massive crash summer program to train teachers for the public schools. At the time most North Carolina school teachers were teenagers who had little or no formal education and only rudimentary knowledge of the subjects they were teaching.
The entire University of North Carolina faculty and President Battle (center) at the time the summer "normal sessions" started in 1878
The idea of having these normal school sessions to train teachers was highly controversial at this time. Prior to the Civil War teachers in North Carolina had been male, white, and from upper and middle class backgrounds. They were also primarily young men who would only teach for a few years while they looked for a higher paid profession or became a school administrator. The shortage of qualified teachers was so severe by 1877 that lower class men and even women were admitted into the UNC normal sessions. The admission of women into teaching was as controversial at that time as offering education to North Carolina's black population. Middle and upper class whites were then part of an aristocracy, and felt threatened that both the expansion of women into teaching and providing schools for the lower classes would dilute their privileges.
UNC Chapel Hill women students during the summer of 1917 enrolled in a teaching program
Becoming a teacher in the late 19th and early 20th century was about the only work a woman could get in North Carolina outside the home. The University's teaching program was also the only means a woman had for attending UNC.
Not until the late 1890's did UNC offer summer school sessions like we know today, where courses were offered in a wide variety of fields.
Comments:
Bob Daniels
6:19 PM Tue 9/1/2009
I just recently read that UNC President Battle said this summer school was the greatest achievement of his administration.
Dorbert Pettis
10:33 AM Tue 9/1/2009
I enjoyed one glorious summer at UNC taking several education courses in 1978. I got my degree at UNC-G, though I have Carolina blue blood in my veins.
Jill Harrison
9:03 PM Mon 8/31/2009
I am amazed by your wide breadth of information on Chapel Hill's history.
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Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
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Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
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I entered UNC as a freshman in 1964, but got a "head's up" tip from a HS friend who had entered a year earlier. He advised going to Summer School before the fall semester and taking Mod Civ and English so I could get them out of the way before the Fall and have more time to "have fun" as he put it. I had been off to boarding school, so being away from home was no big deal for me, so I did it. I lived in Mangum in a huge corner room with a roommate whose name I long ago forgot. There were, I think, about 6000 students first session and about 2-3000 second session. It was like a big high school. I got through a few hard classes, learned the campus and the town, and was really ready to get busy in the fall thanks to this good advice. Oh, tuition was $100.00 per session plus $21.00 in fees. My allowance was, I think, $10.00/week, and you could eat a decent dinner at Lenoir for 50 or 60 cents.
I remember that I attended one of Dick Clarkâs Cavalcade of Stars bus tours in Raleigh and saw The Shirelles, The Supreme's, Gene Pitney, The Crystals, and a bunch of others. I think it was $5.00 or less for the show. I don't remember how I got there as freshman were not permitted cars in those days. I attended Summer School every year after that, and it was always fun!