See my post and see how it fits with Gatto's views:
To: ican'tbelieveit
I hope you are not doing any of the home schooling history instruction.
In America's past the vast majority could not read or write much - nor did that matter in searching for work - being that you were a farmer or worked in the factory or other such manual labor. President Andrew Jackson was barely literate.
The common school movement as public schools were called had to fight against some (not all) industrialist forces (for whom universal education meant less availability of child labor and more taxes), with parochial schools (who perceived public education as a threat to their religious values), and with parents (children were not available to work on the farm or in factories for the family).
The late 19th and early 20th century saw the creation of a massive, secular system of public education open to all.
The movement for common schools constituted a rebuilding of the educational system (from the one school house model of old) to respond to the needs of expanding industries and the realities of growing cities such as training and disciplining of the new immigrants so they could become productive workers, and the provision of stability and control in the populated urban areas as well as educating away dangerous ideas from European immigrants such as anarchy and Communisim, etc. The common school movement was supported by the need of far seeing inustrialists/factory owners for a disciplined and productive workforce, the need of the emerging liberal state for social and ideological control (removing it from the church - lots of Catholics made our leaders fear this back then), the hopes of working class and immigrant groups for upward mobility, and the good faith and drive of many well-intentioned educational reformers who conceived education as the main avenue to build a more democratic, more egalitarian, and better society.
That is the history.
So why did the Public School system fail us in the last 30 years? I don't know.
One answer? No more factory jobs. Therefore industrialists no longer lobbied the Fed govt for such public education programs? Still reading studies on the matter myself.
140 posted on 11/14/2004 12:40:17 AM EST by Destro
I agree with Gatto's point that Public Education is a form of social engineering - created by American industrialists to produce better coggs - er workers. It is my theory that the PS system declined when the Factories in America started to close.
Thus the real power behind Public Education - the industrialists - lost interest and the practicality of the past American PS curriculum (simple and designed to produce a good orderly work force) vanished. The power vacuum allowed for Left Wing Socialists to (Industrialists can be seen as Right Wing Socialists) take over the PS education system and freed from what the Industrialists wanted began to work in the area of theory free from any practical constraints.
That is why we have seen the PS system in shambles.
Comments are welcomed.
A.Pole, I pinged you because we can see here how the decline of American industry has impacted our PS system.
so what do you think of Gatto's suggestions for reforming public education (last section of The Underground History of American Education)... do you think they would work? why or why not?
another great read is "A Thomas Jefferson Education" by Oliver DeMille...