This Day In Education

It’s December 4th and on this day in 1920 the founder of PFLAG, Jeanne Manford, was born. 

Manford’s steadfast love for her son Morty blazed a path for other parents to advocate for their gay and lesbian children.

It’s December 3, and on this day in 1971, students in Don Rawitch’s history class at Bryant Junior High in Minnesota fired up the game Oregon Trail for the first time. Those students had no way of knowing they were playing the first edition of a game that somehow secured a magical place in pop culture history and coined the popular phrase “you have died of dysentery.”

It’s December 2nd and today is National Special Education Day! 

This day commemorates the signing of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975. We talked about the history of this act just the other day on November 29th.

It’s December 1, and on this day in 1981, the Supreme Court of the United States listened to arguments in the landmark Plyler V. Doe case, involving undocumented immigrants' access to education.

It’s the end of November and in 1959 the ACT was introduced. 

The ACT, otherwise known as American College Testing, was a competitor to the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT.

It’s November 29th and today in 1975 President Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA). The act was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA in 1990. Prior to this act, children with disabilities were often excluded, intentionally or otherwise, from free effective public education.

It’s November 27, and on this day in 1901, the United States Army War college was founded.

Founded in response to the perceived failings of the Spanish-American War, the Army college is not a regular college in the sense that you can get a degree in architecture or Post World War Two Southern Literature. Instead, graduates earn a master’s degree in strategic studies

It’s Nov. 26, and on this day in 1865, an unknown British mathematician’s novel about a wild little girl was published for the first time. 

His name was Charles Dodgson, but he’s better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll. The book about the lost girl? It's called Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

It’s November 25th, and on this day in 1952 author Crescent Dragonwagon was born. 

Yes, that is her legal name!