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When you go back to the 1700s and 1800s and examine the ‘great minds’ of the era....you come to this odd group of items in the education process.

Most of these great minds...had private tutors for the ages of six to twelve, and were fully educated by today’s standards by age thirteen.

Greek philosophy and Roman history figures into their work demanded by the tutors.

Engineering skills were demanded in most all university programs of the 1700s and 1800s. Go look at degree requirements and class offerings. Most young men took a class related to engineering talents of the day.

Somewhere in the early 1900s....we set up Wal-mart-like schools and simply ran kids through some simplified process to say by age eighteen they were ‘certified’. A kid from 1876....probably was smarter, than kid today...which is sad to admit in public, if you take away all the IT-stuff.

-— Somewhere in the early 1900s....we set up Wal-mart-like schools and simply ran kids through some simplified process to say by age eighteen they were ‘certified’.-—

Great diagnosis. You’re referring to Carnegie Units, which you’ve probably heard of. Carnegie’s foundation decided that learning should be measured by time-in-seat.

The idea is so insane that it hardly requires refutation, yet the idea is universally accepted. The most astonishing aspect of this is that private schools adopted the same model.

Imagine how motivated students would be to actually learn something if they could MOVE ON once they mastered a subject.

Each student could move through subjects at their own pace. The mechanism would be computerized, modularized, interactive lessons. I took a class like this in college and loved it. There was no test-stress, but you couldn’t move on until you passed. I learned the subject matter better than in any other class.

In such a system, teachers would act as tutors and advisors.

So how did our current system come about? Schooling is about societal control, not education. It has been since its inception. Schools are the single most nefarious institution in modern society.

Check out John Taylor Gatto’s “Underground History of American History.” It’s eye-opening, to say the least.