Views on American Education Pt. 1

"…there shall be compulsory education, as the saying is, of all and sundry, as far this is possible; and the pupils shall be regarded as belonging to the state rather than to their parents."
Plato (Greek philosopher), The Laws, 4th Century B.C.

The idea of compulsory, publicly funded education originated, as so many other American ideas, with the Greeks, but it has continuously been influenced, molded, and enforced by religious, governmental, and industrial forces throughout the history of the American Colonies, and the United States that came after. Originally proposed by the Puritans in Massachusetts, and further endorsed by industrial oligarchies through the ages, today it controls the lives of all people within the nation's borders from the ages of five to eighteen, by force and law. To fully understand our modern educational system, it is crucial to attempt to understand the origins and evolution of its governing ideas. Here I put forth a brief history of compulsory education in North America:

Compulsory Education in America was first enacted by law in the state of Massachusetts in 1642, and required that parents teach their children the principles of religion and the laws of the commonwealth. It specifically stated that all parents were obligated by law to teach their children to read and write, though no government provisions were made for such.

The first tax-funded, government supervised schooling came with the Law of 1647, also called the “Old Deluder Satan Act.” So called because of its wording, which began:

“It being one chiefe project of ye old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures, as in former times by keeping him in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from ye use of tongues, so at least ye true since & meaning of ye original might be clouded by false glosses of saint seeming deceivers, yet learning may not be buried in ye grave of or fathers in ye church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting or endeavors.”

It specified that any community of 50 households or more must have a schoolmaster who would teach children to read and write, and that any community of 100 or more households must have a Latin grammar instructor. The purpose of these instructors, and their teaching of literacy, was to enable the populace to read and better understand the bible and the commonwealth’s laws. This was its only purpose as laid down by the state government. This, however, was the original basis for all institutionalized American education systems to come in the next 400 years.

The next great influence on American education was the British author John Locke, who came up with the idea that all children started life as a “tabula rasa,” or blank slate, which must be filled. He advocated public schooling to help teach children a “good work ethic,” which would better help them function as workers.

In the 1730’s education was further influenced by Christian von Wolff, who originated the doctrine that the mind could best be developed through “mental discipline,” meaning tedious drill and repetition of basic skills. Later, Thomas Jefferson proposed a “two track educational system,” providing different schooling for “the laboring and the learned.” In 1787 the Constitutional Congress passed an ordinance which included: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

The first public high school was opened in 1821, and in 1837 Horace Mann campaigned for increased funding of public schools. By 1852 the first law enforcing mandatory attendance of schools was passed in Massachusetts, and by 1918, every state had such laws.

In 1913 Edward Lee Thorndike’s book, Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning, began to dominate American educational ideas. It put forth the theory that human learning involves habit formation, which is strengthened by repetition. Standardized tests entered American schools as an outgrowth of the First World War, as a means to screen potential soldiers, and in 1926 the SAT was first administered, itself a version of the “Alpha Army” test, which was developed to screen recruits.

After the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union, the National Defense Education Act was passed, which increased funding for scientific research ad science education, out of a perceived lack in the American populace.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan pledged to abolish the Department of Education, but instead it became a Cabinet level agency in the same year as his inauguration. There was a renewed “back to basics” movement though, which sought to realign schooling with the ideas of discipline and repetition.

In 1993, Massachusetts lead the nation again with laws requiring statewide common curriculums and tests, further enforcing the idea that all students should conform to a single teaching system. The idea of nationally standardized tests continued to gain ground from this point and was reinforced by the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002.

From reading between the lines of this history, one can come to several conclusions on the impetus and rationale of public education. Ralph Waldo Emerson, American thinker and transcendentalist of the 19th century, wrote in an essay on education and its institutionalized nature in Massachusetts:

"Therefore I praise New England because it is the country in the world where is the freest expenditure for education. ..., namely, that the poor man, whom the law does not allow to take an ear of corn when starving, nor a pair of shoes for his freezing feet, is allowed to put his hand into the pocket of the rich, and say, You shall educate me, not as you will, but as I will: not alone in the elements, but, by further provision, in the languages, in sciences, in the useful and in elegant arts. The child shall be taken up by the State, and taught, at the public cost, the rudiments of knowledge, and, at last, the ripest results of art and science.”

What Emerson puts forward is that public education is a kind of gift, a charity, of the wealthy classes, to the poor, which provides them the means to better themselves, but he also mentions, at the beginning of his essay that the wealthy refuse to give any man food when starving, or shelter when freezing, implying that rich are completely unwilling to provide any provision for the poor. At least any provision which would not in turn benefit themselves.

The law, as he says, provides no provisions for the cessation of starvation or poverty, but does for education. Why? Might it be that it does so, and from “the pocket of the rich,” because it benefits from the action? By teaching repetition, and work ethic, which benefit’s the students in their future industrial roles, and by teaching them the law so that they might better follow it, doe not the government and the industrial interests both benefit? The “gift of education” is no such thing then, but a system enforced by the powers that be to further enable the power they already hold. For this reason there has been opposition to public, compulsory schooling throughout its history, on the grounds of morality, personal liberty, and freedom of thought.

"I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there."
Gaius Petronius (Roman philosopher), Satyr icon, Late 1st Century A.D.

“A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.”
John Stuart Mill (British philosopher and political theorist), 1859

“Take at hazard one hundred children of several educated generations and one hundred uneducated children of the people and compare them in anything you please; in strength, in agility, in mind, in the ability to acquire knowledge, even in morality--and in all respects you are startled by the vast superiority on the side of the children of the uneducated.”
Leo Tolstoy (Russian writer and philosopher), 1862

“That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
H. L. Mencken (American journalist and essayist), 1925

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry... It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty."
Albert Einstein (Austrian-American physicist), 1951

"Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."
Thurgood Marshall (U.S. Supreme Court Judge), 1969