Education in Cincinnati has a richer history than you might think
The beginning of the new semester has arrived. But we cannot move into the future without looking at the past.
When students and teachers are ready to read the book, we’ve put together the ABCs of the various instructors and institutions that have left a lasting impact on Cincinnati education.
A is for art. The Queen City has many excellent arts institutions. Cincinnati Art Academy, founded in 1869. The University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the result of the 1973 Magnet School of Creative and Performing Arts and the 1955 merger of Clara Bauer’s Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (1867) and College of Music (1878). Joined UC in 1962.
B is for Bronson v. Board of Education. A lawsuit filed by the NAACP in 1974 held the Cincinnati Board of Education responsible for maintaining segregated schools. The 1984 Settlement allowed school districts to choose their own methods of desegregation. (Plaintiff her Mona Bronson later worked on her Enquirer library and features.)
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C is for Cincinnati College. The city’s first university opened in 1819 but did not last long. Dr. Daniel Drake reopened in his 1835 and merged with the Cincinnati Law School. The college shared a building on Walnut Street with a commercial library. After a devastating fire in 1845, the library paid him $10,000 in advance for repairs, which in return led to him leasing the building for 10,000 years. Cincinnati College he merged with UC in 1911.
D is for Dr. Daniel Drake. A noted physician and Cincinnati’s first historian, Drake founded the Ohio Medical College (now part of the UC) in 1819 and the Western Academy of Natural Sciences in 1835. Cincinnati Museum Center.
E is Elder. And La Salle, Moller, Mercy Macquarie, St. Ursula, Covington Catholic and others. Local private schools have a long tradition, many of which are run by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati or Northern Kentucky.
F is for frequently asked questions. “Where did you go to school?” That’s how Cincinnati people know each other by what high school they went to.
G is German. The German immigration boom of the 1840s made Cincinnati mostly bilingual. However, due to the anti-German backlash during World War I, German was banned from school classrooms and German-language books were banished to the basements of public libraries. Fairview-Clifton German Language School now offers a German-based curriculum, and parents have been out camping for days to enroll their children.
H is for Hughes STEM High School. Hughes was the city’s second high school, opening in 1851 and named after Thomas Hughes, who bequeathed land in 1824 for the school fund. Hughes moved to University Heights in 1910. This building is famous for its tall blocks. towers and gargoyles.
I’m an ivy league. The University of Miami in Oxford is recognized as a “Public Ivy” having the academic reputation and prestige of an Ivy League school at the price of a public school. Miami was registered on her map in 1809, and her first student was born in 1824.
The J is for Jenny Porter. She began teaching kindergarten at the Frederick Douglass School in Walnut Hills in 1893, and in 1914 founded the Harriet Beecher Stowe School, where she served as principal. In 1928, she became the first black woman to receive her doctorate degree. from UC.
K is for Kentucky. The University of Northern Kentucky at Highland Heights began in 1946 as an extension of the University of Kentucky at Covington. This paved the way for him to Northern Kentucky State University in 1968, becoming a college in 1976.
L is the library. The origins of the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Libraries can be traced back to the Ohio Common Schools Act of 1853, which provided for funding school libraries. School Board President Rufus King built the Central Library, which housed the school until the completion of the original Main Library on Vine Street in 1874 (demolished in 1955).
M is for McGuffey Readers. Elementary school primers that promote morality and reading have been a staple of education for generations. William Holmes McGuffey, a professor at the University of Miami, created the first reader in 1836, published by Truman and Smith of Cincinnati.
N is No Child Left Behind. President George W. Bush signed the law into law in 2002 at Hamilton High School in Hamilton. The law was intended to bridge the achievement gap among poor and underrepresented students by holding schools accountable for their students’ proficiency, but has been criticized for relying on standardized tests. I was.
O is the Ohio Institute of Mechanics. Founded in 1828, the Institute was a technical laboratory for mechanical arts, including engineering. Working as a telegraph engineer in Cincinnati, Thomas Edison frequented the Institute’s library in Greenwood Hall in Six and Vine in 1867 to study books on electricity. The laboratory he moved to the Tudor Building on Central Parkway in 1911, and in 1969 he was absorbed by UC.
P is for Peter H. Clarke. An educator and intellectual, he was an influential black voice. As principal of Gaines High School from 1866, he educated a generation of black teachers. Clark his Montessori High School in Hyde Park is named after him.
Q is a quiz. Which area high school consistently ranks top in Ohio by US News & World Report? A. Walnut Hills. B. Wyoming. C. Indian Hill. D. Madeira. answer: all of the above.
R is for rabbinic research. Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, a leader of Reform Judaism, founded the Hebrew Union College – Institute of Judaism and Religion in Cincinnati in 1875. HUC has been rabbis since 1883, but will close the program at his campus at University Heights by 2026. Sally Preesand, the first female US Rabbi, graduated from HUC in 1972.
S is seminary. Founded in 1829, Walnut Hills Lane Theological Seminary was headed by Presbyterian theologian Lyman Beecher. The 1834 student-led debate was the first to publicly condemn slavery and give a voice to abolitionists. Witnessed by Beecher’s daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe, they inspired her writing of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.
T is for teachers. The heart and soul of education. Without adequate admiration and support, their value is incomparable to growing our youth.
U is for the University of Cincinnati. Founded in 1870 with funds donated by Charles McMiken, UC opened in a hilltop mansion on Vine Street before moving uptown to Clifton Avenue in 1893. UC absorbed several colleges and uses Cincinnati College’s 1819 as its founding date. UC recently removed McMiken’s name from its campus, citing his history as a racist.
V is a vocational school. Teaching professions, from electricians to plumbers to phlebotomists, replaced colleges. Technical studies are an important part of Cincinnati State Technical and Community Colleges, founded in 1969, and even high schools like Taft in the West End.
W is for Woodward. William Woodward and his wife Abigail Cutter started a free public grammar school for poor students in 1831. That year it was renamed Bond Hill High School and moved to Over-the-Rhine in 1855. William Howard Taft, 1874 Woodward Alumnus, laid the foundation for a new school building on Sycamore Street the day after he was elected president in 1908. Woodward High School he returned to Bond Hill in 1953. The old Woodward building was home to the School for Creative and Performing Arts. 1975-2010.
X is Xavier University. Xavier began as the Athenaeum, a Catholic men’s college founded by Bishop Edward Fenwick in 1831 and was located on Sycamore Street adjacent to St. Xavier’s Church. In 1840, Bishop John Baptist his Purcell commissioned the Jesuits to take over the school, renaming it St. Xavier’s College. It moved to Evanston in 1912 and became Xavier College in 1930.
Y is Yellow Springs. A nearby village is Antioch College, a prominent liberal arts school founded in 1850 and run by educational reformer Horace Mann. His niece, Rebecca Pennell, was a founding professor at Antioch and the first female professor in the United States to receive the same status and salary as a male professor.
Z is the zoo. In founding the Zoological Society of Cincinnati in 1873, Andrew Arkenbretcher raised funds for a new zoo “for the beautification of the city and the education of men and women of all ages.” Since 1975, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens has partnered with Cincinnati Public Schools to offer zoological academies.
