Founding Fathers on public schooling
I wanted to write about the history of public schooling for a few posts, because I've recently discovered that the original design and intent of public schools was not at all what I had thought.
What I had thought was this: We have public education because we want to build an egalitarian, democratic, socially mobile society, and to have an educated populace.
But some of the evidence of those supposed ideals is a little... off, somehow:
By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.
--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
Yes, he says genius is found equally among the poor and the rich, which sounds noble and egalitarian. But it turns out he only intended to provide secondary education to 20 boys per year from among the poor, and fully educate 10-- and even that was in order "to avail the State of those talents." As Jefferson put it:
By this means twenty of the best geniusses will be raked from the rubbish annually.
He also said:
Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.
I think it is relevant to remember that the Founding Fathers to a large extent feared the unwashed masses and the possibility of mob rule. The people cannot safeguard their own liberty "unless enlightened to a certain degree," and thus Jefferson proposed insuring literacy with three years of formal education guaranteed to any boy whose parents chose to send him to public school. But this education was only guaranteed "to a certain degree," since Jefferson also believed:
The mass of our citizens may be divided into two classes -- the laboring and the learned. The laboring will need the first grade of education to qualify them for their pursuits and duties; the learned will need it as a foundation for further acquirements.
I think Jefferson was more concerned here with maintaining the fledgling Republic (and the fledgling Republic's economy, perhaps) than with educating the people for their own sake.
I do think Jefferson had noble ideals, though he was a bit more aristocratic than they tell you about in high school. But some of the Founding Fathers were-- there's no other way to put this-- positively fascist about public education. Consider Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, later a Congressman, and America's most prominent physician at that time. In 1786, he wrote Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, which included these suggestions:
The principle of patriotism stands in need of the reinforcement of prejudice, and it is well known that our strongest prejudices in favor of our country are formed in the first one and twenty years of our lives.Maybe I'm making too much of this. Maybe inculcating students with patriotism, civic duty and obedience isn't so bad. Time magazine, in their feature story on homeschooling, summarized it thusly: "Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history."
Our schools of learning, by producing one general and uniform system of education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government.
Next to the duty which young men owe to their Creator, I wish to see a SUPREME REGARD TO THEIR COUNTRY [caps in original] inculcated upon them.... Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it.
In the education of youth, let the authority of our masters be as absolute as possible.... By this mode of education, we prepare our youth for the subordination of laws and thereby qualify them for becoming good citizens of the republic. I am satisfied that the most useful citizens have been formed from those youth who have never known or felt their own wills till they were one and twenty years of age....
To share values. (Which values?)
To learn a common history. (Which interpretation of history?)
If you feel there is nothing at all wrong with these goals, I include the quotes below as food for thought.
It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.
--Benito Mussolini; from "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism," 1932.
Teachers are directed to instruct their pupils... and to awaken in them a sense of their responsibility toward the community of the nation.
--Bernhard Rust, Nazi Minister of Education; from "Racial Instruction and the National Community," 1935.